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PROGRAM OF EXERCISES
NORTH CAROLINA DAY
(MclVER MEMORIAL DAY)
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1906
COMPILED BY
R. D. W. CONNOR
ISSUED FROM THE OFFICE OF THE
STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION,
RALEIGH, N. C.
CHAPTER 164
OF THE PUBLIC LAWS OF 1901.
An Act to Provide for the Celebration of North Carolina Day
in the Public Schools.
The General Assembly of North Carolina do enact:
Section 1. That the 12th day of October in each and every year, to
be called "North Carolina Day," may be devoted, by appropriate exer-cises
in the public schools of the state, to the consideration of some
topic or topics of our state history, to be selected by the superintendent
of public instruction: Provided, that if the said day shall fall on Sat-urday
or Sunday, then the celebration shall occur on the Monday next
following: Provided further, that if the said day shall fall at a time
when any such school may not be in session, the celebration may be held
within one month from the beginning of the term, unless the superin-tendent
of public instruction shall designate some other time.
Sec. 2. This act shall be in force from and after its ratification.
In the General Assembly read three times, and ratified this the 9th
day of February, A. D. 1901.
CONTENTS.
The Old Xorth State, William Gaston.
Charles Duncan McIver. A Sonnet, . . . William C. Smith.
Charles Duncan McIver. A Sketch, ... R. D. W. Connor.
The Coronach, Sir Walter Scott.
Charles D. McIver as I Knew Him, J. Y. Joyner.
''He Died Poor that He Might Make Others Rich," Josephus Daniels.
America, S. F. Smith.
Stories of Charles D. McIver, J. Y. Joyner.
Southern Educational Policies, Charles D. McIver.
Ho! For Carolina, William B. Harrell.
PREFACE.
To the Teacher:
We have deemed it wise and proper to turn aside this year from our
plan of celebrating North Carolina Day in the public schools by the study
of the great events in the past history of the state in chronological order
to let the children study the life and character of one who, in the
years to come, will be recognized as the greatest educational leader
of our day and as a great central figure in the educational and industrial
development of our state. We wish this day to be devoted, therefore,
to a reverent study of the life, character, and unselfish service of
Charles D. Mclver, the children's friend, the teacher's friend, the state's
friend, the effective and courageous champion of all that vitally
affected the interests of these.
We know no more effective means of teaching to the children of this
generation the all-important lesson of civic service and civic duty, of
inspiring them with the highest ideal of patriotism and right living
and of inculcating in them the best educational doctrines than the
study of the splendid object-lesson in all to be found in the simple story
of the life and teachings of this man.
Every child in North Carolina ought to contribute something to the
fund for the erection of an heroic bronze statue to his memory. Such
contribution would be an object-lesson to each child, never to be forgotten,
in properly honoring the memory of a great teacher who unselfishly
devoted his life to the children and the state. Let every teacher urge
every child to bring on North Carolina Day a contribution to this fund.
Forward all contributions by post-office order, if possible, to me.
Very truly yours,
J. Y. JOYNER,
Superintendent Public Instruction.
November 5, 1906.
THE OLD NORTH STATE.
BY WILLIAM GASTON.
[This was Dr. Mclver's favorite song. He made it the rallying song of the college, and
had the students sing it at every commencement and on all other public occasions. It was
a joy and inspiration to watch his face as the six hundred girls sang it.— J. Y. J.]
Carolina! Carolina! Heaven's blessings attend her!
While we live we will cherish, protect, and defend her!
Though the scorner may sneer at and witlings defame her,
Our hearts swell with gladness whenever we name her.
Hurrah! Hurrah! the Old North State forever!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the good Old North State!
Though she envies not others their merited glory,
Say, whose name stands foremost in Liberty's story?
Though too true to herself e'er to crouch to oppression,
Who can yield to just rule more loyal submission?
Hurrah, etc.
Plain and artless her sons, but whose doors open faster
At the knock of a stranger, or the tale of disaster?
How like to the rudeness of their dear native mountains,
With rich ore in their bosoms and life in their fountains.
Hurrah, etc.
Then let all who love us, love the land that we live in
(As happy a region as on this side of Heaven),
Where Plenty and Freedom, Love and Peace smile before us.
Raise aloud, raise together the heart-thrilling chorus!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the Old North State forever!
Hurrah ! Hurrah ! the good Old North State
!
CHARLES DUNCAN MclVER.
WILLIAM C. SMITH.
Rest, son of Carolina, sweetly rest
:
The boon long self-denied now meetly thine.
Obedience yield we to the call divine,
Our comfort this—the Master knoweth best.
He knoweth best, yet sore we feel our need
;
So great the void, we may not smile nor sing,
But, bowed in grief, our altar-gift we bring
And mid our tears look mutely up and plead.
* Grant us with him to see where honor lies;
To build for God and man, and not for self;
To face the future with untroubled eyes,
Intent on lasting service, not on pelf.
Thus life lives on its purpose to fulfil
When weary eyelids close and tired hands grow still.
CHARLES DUNCAN MclVER.
BY R. D. W. CONNOR.
THE FARMER BOY.
To-day there are thousands of boys and girls in North Carolina who
are at school in pretty school-houses, sitting in comfortable desks,
reciting to good teachers, and looking forward to bright futures, because
Charles D. Mclver was their friend. They may never have seen him,
and he may never have seen them: but he loved them; worked for
them; spoke for them; wrote for them; fought and won battles for
them. His picture ought to hang before the eyes of every school child
in North Carolina. His name ought to be on their tongues. They ought
to know by heart the story of his life.
Charles Duncan Mclver, the Children's Friend, was born in Moore
county, in the Old North State, September 27, 1860. The names of
most of the people living in the neighborhood began, like his own, with
"Mac," for these people were descendants of Scotch Highlanders. His
own grandfather was born in the Highlands of Scotland and came
to North Carolina when he was only eight years old. So Charles D.
Mclver was the grandson of a Scotch Highlander.
Last year in our "North Carolina Day" exercises we learned that the
Highlanders are "a strong and active race, large in stature, well-devel-oped
in body, robust in health." They are economical, thrifty, and char-itable.
They are brave and patriotic. They are generous and true in
their friendships. They love the truth and fear God. They believe in
building churches and schools. They regard education and religion as
the chief concerns of life.
Such a man was the father of Charles D. Mclver; such a woman was
his mother. Together they made him such a man. There were two
things the father always insisted upon his boys doing: first, to attend
regularly the best school within reach ; second, to work regularly on the
farm on Saturdays and during vacations. The best schools then were
the private schools, and to one of these Charles D. Mclver was sent. He
was a good student, for he knew too well the value of an education to
waste his time in school. He was a good worker on the farm, for he
knew too Avell the value of the lessons learned in the field to waste his
holidays and vacations in idleness. "Saturdays were as regular work-days
for young Mclver as for any of the employees on the farm. He
escaped no kind of farm labor, from planting, harvesting, splitting rails,
minding the gap, log-rolling, corn-shucking, piling brush, and digging
ditches, to plowing a deaf mule in a new-ground with a bull-tongue plow.
No loafers were allowed on that farm. Idleness was considered an
unpardonable sin."*
Young Mclver learned to love work, whether with his books or
behind the plow. He used to say that the hardest work he ever tried
to do was resting. After he became a man his friends often begged him
to take a vacation and rest. To one of them who told him he was ruin-ing
his health by hard work, he said: "I cannot rest until my work is
done. My joy is in my work. I had rather do it the best I can and
live a shorter time."
THE UNIVERSITY STUDENT.
When he was seventeen years old he left the farm and neighborhood
school and went to the University of North Carolina. There, too, he
worked hard for four years. When he was graduated in 1881 he was
one of the best scholars in his class. He stood first in Greek and French,
and shared with three others the first place in Latin.
He made many valuable friends at the university. Some of them
are Charles B. Aycock, former Governor of North Carolina; Edwin A.
Alderman, a great orator and educator; James Y. Joyner, State Super-intendent
of Public Instruction, and many other such men.
But the two men who had most influence on him were Dr. Kemp P.
Battle, then president of the university, and Dr. George T. Winston, then
professor of Latin. Dr. Mclver said that Dr. Battle regarded "the
people of North Carolina as a great big family, each member of which
owes to every other member affectionate sympathy and loyal support in
any worthy undertaking. He loves the people of this state. * * *
Every sprig of grass and every bird that touches the soil of North
Carolina is dear to him. "
::" * * He is proud of our history and is
proud that he is proud of it. * * * No man can come under his influ-ence"
without wishing "to be of service to so good a state and so great
a people."
"The other man to whom I feel indebted is Dr. George T. Winston,"
who inspires "in all the youths he touches self-reliance and the audacity
to undertake large tasks."
The spirits of these two great teachers united in Charles D. Mclver.
He, too, came to think of the people of North Carolina as "a great big
family." He was proud of her history. He loved "every sprig of grass
and every bird that touches her soil." He wished "to be of service to so
good a state and so great a people." And he, too, had "self-reliance and
audacity to undertake large tasks." His great work in North Carolina
could not have been done had he not loved the state and had faith in her
power to do great things. This work is a splendid example of the rich-ness
that comes to the state through the life and work of her teachers.
Isaac Erwin Avery in the Charlotte Observer.
HIS FIRST VOTE.
After his graduation young Mclver went to Durham to teach in a
private school. So great was his success that before the close of his first
year he was made principal of the school. While he was teaching in
Durham an election was held upon the question of a local tax for
a public graded school. If the people voted for the tax and started the
public school, Mclver knew that he would have to close his private
school. But he knew, too, that there were many children in the town
who would never get an education unless the public schools were estab-lished.
What should he do? Should he vote for the tax and against
his own school; or should he vote against the tax and for his own
school? It did not take him long to decide this question, for he was
anxious "to be of service" to the children. He was willing to close the
doors of his own school-house if he might only open the doors of the
public school where all the children could go. He cared less for his own
welfare than for the welfare of the children. So he worked for the
local tax and on election day voted for it himself and persuaded other
men to vote for it. He was always proud of the fact that his first vote
was cast for a local tax for public education.
His own school was closed when the graded school opened; and the
people of Durham at once called upon him to teach in the graded school.
He was principal of this school for one and one-half years and then
went to Winston to teach in the graded school there which had been
started by Calvin H. Wiley. After nearly two years' work in Winston,
he became principal of the Literary Department of Peace Institute in
Raleigh, where he remained until June, 1889.
A GREAT SCHOOL FOR WOMEN.
During all these years he had worked hard to improve himself as a
teacher. He visited other schools; talked with other teachers; read
many books on teaching. During his vacations he had taught in sum-mer
schools and institutes for teachers. From this work he learned
that the greatest need of North Carolina was the education of all her
children. He saw that the state must have better school-houses and
longer school terms ; but above all, he saw that she needed better school-teachers.
He knew that no school is any better than its teachers, and the
great question was, How can the teachers be improved ?
Mclver found the answer to this question. He said the state should
build a great school for teaching and training teachers. Such a school
is called a "Normal" School or College. In 1889 Dr. Mclver made a
great speech before the Teachers' Assembly in favor of a Normal College.
The Teachers' Assembly then appointed a committee to go to Raleigh
and urge the legislature to vote money for such a school. Mclver was
placed at the head of this committee and worked hard with the members
of the legislature; but they would not do as he asked.
10
Instead of voting for the Normal School, the legislature decided to
send a man into every county in North Carolina to hold meetings and
teach the teachers and to talk to the people about the education of their
children. Two men were selected for this work—Charles D. Mclver and
Edwin A. Alderman. They began their work in September, 1889. They
met the teachers of every county in the state and taught them how to
teach. They held public meetings of preachers, fanners, lawyers, mer-chants,
editors, mechanics, and everybody else who would come. They
made eloquent speeches to them about the education of their children.
They urged them to vote taxes on their property to support schools.
They spoke about the Normal College for teachers and urged the people
to demand that their legislators vote the money for it. Everywhere they
went the people became more than ever interested in education and in the
improvement of their schools.
When the legislature met in 1891 Mclver again went to Raleigh to
work for the Normal College. It was hard work, for there were many
people who were opposed to such a college. But he lost no chance to
talk to them—in the capitol, on the streets, in the hotels, wherever he
could get a member to listen to him. He told them that the only hope
tens of thousands of boys and girls in the state had to get an education
was in the public schools. Most of the teachers in these public schools
were women. For the good of the children, then, the state ought to* have
a great college where these women teachers could be educated and
trained how to teach.
If the state will build such a college, he said, thousands of girls will
become educated women. Without such a school most of them would
grow up in a state of ignorance. Ignorance is the worst kind of slavery.
Such a college would free the white girls of North Carolina from this
curse. Besides, North Carolina would then secure teachers better than
she had ever had, "who will bless her because she has blessed them."
Dr. Mclver was so deeply in earnest and worked so hard that he
persuaded the legislature to vote the money for the college. It is
called the State Normal and Industrial College for Women and is
located at Greensboro. Dr. Mclver was elected president and remained
president until his death, a period of fourteen years.
During these years the college has had wonderful growth. The two
or three small buildings on ten acres of ground have grown to eleven
buildings on one hundred and thirty acres of ground. The number of
teachers in the college has increased from fifteen to fifty. More than
three thousand young women have been students there. They are daugh-ters
of rich men and poor men ; of preachers, doctors, and lawyers ; of
merchants, manufacturers, and farmers; of mechanics, engineers, and
day laborers; of men working in almost every form of honest labor.
They have come from the country, towns, and cities. Girls from every
county in the state have been students there; and students of the Nor-mal
College have taught school in every county. More than two thou-
11
sand teachers have been trained at this great college how to teach; and
they have taught more than two hundred thousand North Carolina boys
and girls. Truly, as Dr. Mclver said, these women have blessed North
Carolina because she has blessed them.
Charles D. Mclver built this great college. It is "not a thing of brick
and stone," but a great school with "an open door of opportunity to
every worthy white girl, however poor, however rich, within the borders
of the state—a means of fitting her for good and useful citizenship."
It is a college in which is taught "sound learning, liberal culture, earn-est
living, and high thinking." It is "the product of the unselfish love
and labor of one man"—Charles D. Mclver.
THE EDUCATIONAL LEADER.
The building of the State Normal and Industrial College is the greatest
work done in North Carolina within the last twenty-five years. If Dr.
Mclver had done nothing else, this work alone would place him among
the greatest men of North Carolina. But he did much more. Wherever
there was a word to be spoken in the cause of education, especially the
education of Southern boys and girls, his voice was heard. "No meeting
of Southern educators seemed complete without him; no educational
program satisfactory until his name appeared on it."*
Three years ago a leading North Carolina paper expressed the gen-eral
opinion of his work. "Dr. Mclver," it said, "has been a leading
force in every movement looking for progress, educational or otherwise,
in North Carolina. * * * When the history of this decade is written,
the story of the public services rendered his state by Charles Duncan
Mclver will be one of the brightest pages in the splendid volume of
patriotic achievement. There is not a man in the state who has made
himself felt so powerfully and so helpfully for progress."f
In July, 1905, a great New York magazine, The Outlook, expressed
the view held of him in other sections of the country. "In the Southern
states," it said, "there is no man better entitled to be called a champion
of public schools, and of the whole idea of popular education, than
Charles Duncan Mclver of North Carolina. * * * He is a man of
intense earnestness, energy, insight, and common sense. For the past
twelve years his voice has been raised in behalf of popular education,
not only in every county in his own state, but throughout the South and
in great national assemblies. There is no abler speaker on this subject
than Dr. Mclver. He has been the soul of the forward movement in his
region."f
This "forward movement" has been largely a movement for the
improvement of rural schools. A few years ago several patriotic men
from various sections of our country, who are interested in Southern
* N. W. Walker in The University Magazine, October, 1906.
t Quoted in MS. of Prof. W. C. Smith.
12
education, came together and formed the "Southern Education Board."
Their purpose is to help improve the rural schools of the South. Dr.
Mclver was one of the leading members of this board. When the board
decided to send speakers all over the South to talk to the people about
education, they put Dr. Mclver at the head of that great work. Perhaps
no man in our country did more for the education of the boys and girls
on Southern farms than he did.
Not only did he work himself, but he persuaded many others, men and
women, to fight for the cause of the children. Proud of the fact that the
first vote he had ever cast was a vote for local taxation for schools, by
his great eloquence and earnestness he persuaded thousands of others to
follow his example. Local taxation for longer terms, better school-houses,
better teachers, and better supervision—this was his plea. Elo-quently,
earnestly, and successfully he pleaded the cause of the back-woods
boy and the cross-roads girl when they had no other powerful
friend to help them.
Invitations to speak came to him, not only from all over North Caro-lina,
but from the South, the North, the East, and the West. Often he
had to make his appointments months in advance. He went, not where
he could make most reputation for himself, but where he could do
most good to others, If any doubt arose the chances were nearly
always in favor of the smaller and weaker community. The message
was carried to the few hundreds that gathered at the cross-roads store
or the country church rather than to the larger number who assembled
in opera house or city hall. The message, too, had reference to the
special needs of time and place, and so was a sowing of good seed in
suitable soil. It is safe to say that Charles D. Mclver never addressed
an audience without having a distinct end in view, and that end the
doing of good works. There are few places in North Carolina where
his voice has not been raised in behalf of some public measure. Large
audiences, too, in great cities far removed from his native state, have
greeted this educational leader, and from his lips have heard whole-some
truths relative to our educational progress. Thus he has been
invited to make educational addresses in more than one-half of the states
in the Union.*
He was always welcomed in large gatherings in all parts of the
country among the great leaders in our nation. But Charles D. Mclver
was never so happy as when helping a small rural community in his
own state.
Many honors came to Charles D. Mclver. He did not seek them; they
sought him. They sought him because he thought more of the welfare
of others than of his own ambition. In 1892 he was president of the
JSlorth Carolina Teachers' Assembly. In 1905 he was president of the
Southern Educational Association. He held several high and responsi-
* MS. of W. C. Smith.
On page 13, under heading "Death," third line, read "September'
for "October."
12
education, came together and formed the "Southern Education Board."
Their purpose is to help improve the rural schools of the South. Dr.
Mclver was one of the leading members of this board. When the board
decided to send speakers all over the South to talk to the people about
education, they put Dr. Mclver at the head of that great work. Perhaps
no man in our country did more for the education of the boys and girls
on Southern farms than he did.
Not only did he work himself, but he persuaded many others, men and
women, to fight for the cause of the children. Proud of the fact that the
first vote he had ever cast was a vote for local taxation for schools, by
his great eloquence and earnestness he persuaded thousands of others to
follow his example. Local taxation for longer terms, better school-houses,
better teachers, and better supervision—this was his plea. Elo-quently,
earnestly, and successfully he pleaded the cause of the back-woods
boy and the cross-roads girl when they had no other powerful
friend to help them.
Invitations to speak came to him, not only from all over North Caro-lina,
but from the South, the North, the East, and the West. Often he
had to make his appointments months in advance. He went, not where
he could make most reputation for himself, but where he could do
most good to others. If any doubt arose the chances were nearly
always in favor of the smaller and weaker community. The message
was carried to the few hundreds that gathered at the cross-roads store
or the country church rather than to the larger number who assembled
in opera house or city hall. The message, too, had reference to the
special needs of time and place, and so was a sowing of good seed in
greeted this educational leader, and from his lips have heard whole-some
truths relative to our educational progress. Thus he has been
invited to make educational addresses in more than one-half of the states
in the Union.*
He was always welcomed in large gatherings in all parts of the
country among the great leaders in our nation. But Charles D. Mclver
was never so happy as when helping a small rural community in his
own state.
Many honors came to Charles D. Mclver. He did not seek them ; they
sought him. They sought him because he thought more of the welfare
of others than of his own ambition. In 1892 he was president of the
JSIorth Carolina Teachers' Assembly. In 1905 he was president of the
Southern Educational Association. He held several high and responsi-
* MS. of W. C. Smith.
13
ble positions in the National Educational Association, the largest educa-tional
association" in the world. He was president of the Normal
School Department; and in the summer of 1905 came within a few
votes of being elected president of the association itself. His friends
believe that, if he had lived, he would have been elected president in
1907. He was a member of the board of trustees of the University of
North Carolina and always gave the university his loyal support. The
university loved to honor him and conferred upon him the honorary
degrees of Doctor of Letters and Doctor of Laws. He was offered posi-tions
in colleges of other states at salaries higher than the one he was
receiving. More than once he was asked to accept responsible business
positions paying salaries from two to four times as much as the state
paid him. But no amount of money could tempt him to leave the college
he loved or to forsake the cause of the children of North Carolina. Had
he yielded to these temptations, he might have left wealth to his widow
and children; but choosing rather to serve others, he left them the
glory of his name. He died poor that he might make others rich.
Dr. Mclver was most happy in his home life. While he was teaching
in Winston he was married to Miss Lula V. Martin, also a teacher.
Four children, a son and three daughters, have added happiness to
their home. A simple home was his, blessed by love and kindness and
culture and trust in God.
DEATH.
The greatest ambition in Dr. Mclver's life was to be of service to
others. It was while he was rendering a service to his city and to his
state that he met death. On the 17th of October, 1906, he went to
Raleigh as a member of a committee from the city of Greensboro to wel-come
William Jennings Bryan to North Carolina. Returning from Ral-eigh
he was attacked by a severe pain in his chest; and before medical
aid could reach him fell dead in the arms of one of his friends. A large
crowd had gathered at the little station at Burlington to hear the great
Nebraska orator, but at his first words their cheers and applause died
away: smiles became tears, joy changed to grief.
"I am sure that you will agree with us," said Mr. Bryan, "that this
is not the time or occasion for a political speech, when I tell you that
just after we left Durham one of our party, Dr. Charles D. Mclver, sud-denly
died. He was the man who first invited me to North Carolina
twelve years ago. I have never been to your state since but that he was
on the reception committee and the first to greet and cheer me.
When I recently reached New York from abroad Dr. Mclver was there
to greet me and invite me to North Carolina.
"His life, perhaps more than that of any man I knew as well, illus-trated
the value of an ideal. He was an educated man whose sympa-thies
were with the uneducated. He moved in the highest circles, yet
snapped the golden cord unselfishly lifting others up, and he devoted that
14
life towards bringing blessings to the poor. His death is a loss, a fearful
loss to his country, his state, his city of Greensboro, to the glorious insti-tution
of learning which is now his monument, to his family, and a great
personal loss to me. I bid you a sad good-bye."
The news of Dr. Mclver's death carried grief to thousands who had
known and loved him. Throughout the South, in remote states of the
North and West, men who had been encouraged by his words and
inspired by his spirit felt a sudden vacancy in their lives.
In his own beloved state grief was universal. In every corner of North
Carolina the news was heard with bowed head and moist eyes. Men on
the street corners, women in the school-room, children in the remotest
rural district—all felt that the state had suffered a terrible calamity.
A partisan press in the midst of a heated political compaign ceased their
warfare, and at his grave united in eulogy of the dead. With one accord
they mourned his death as the loss of the state's most useful citizen.
But no class of our people felt his loss so deeply as the teachers, whose
greatest friend he was. Hundreds of teachers caught from his presence
a spirit that sent them to their difficult tasks, from the college recitaticn-room
to the humble log-cabin school-house in the backwoods, with hearts
afire and souls inspired to give their best to their country and to
humanity, caring naught for the vast personal sacrifices frequently
involved.
Note.—The author of this sketch acknowledges with sincere thanks and appreciation
the kindness of Mr. W. C. Smith, professor of English in the State Normal and Industrial
College, and of Mr. Charles L. Van Noppen, publisher of "A Biographical History of
North Carolina, " for the use of the MS. of Professor Smith's excellent sketch of Dr.
Mclver, which is to appear, with portrait, in volume V of that valuable work.
CORONACH.
BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.
He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font, reappearing,
From the raindrops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!
The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that are hoary,
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory.
The autumn winds rushing
Waft the leaves that are searest,
But our flower was in flushing
When blighting was nearest.
Fleet foot on the correi,*
Sage counsel in cumber,
f
Red hand in the foray
—
How sound is thy slumber!
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and for ever!
Hollowed hillside.
Trouble.
CHARLES D. MclVER AS I KNEW HIM.
[Address of J. Y. Joyner at the Mclver Memorial Meeting at the State Normal and
Industrial College, November 20, 1906.]
Could I obey the dictates of my heart, I should pay the tribute of a
sacred silence to my dead friend to-day amid these scenes hallowed by a
thousand gracious memories of him. My love and admiration are too
great to find expression in "matter-moulded forms of speech"; but use
and wont must have their due and I, too, must try to speak.
He was the truest friend, the warmest-hearted, the most generous, the
most actively helpful, the most self-forgetful. He loved his friends and
they knew and the whole world knew that he loved them. He sought
their counsel, loved their companionship, and found their approval
sweet. He was ever on the alert for opportunities to help them and to
enable them to help themselves. He often saw such opportunities and
seized them for his friends before they saw them for themselves. I
have known him, unasked, to lay down his work and travel across the
state at his own expense, without reward or the hope of reward, to do
a friend a kindness. He never allowed any one to speak evil of his
friends in his presence or to misrepresent or misunderstand them, unre-buked
and uncorrected.
And he was the friend of all mankind. All who knew him were his
friends. He had the genius of friendliness. He made friends with
strangers more easily than any man I ever knew. There was in him
that touch of nature that dwells in every elemental man "that makes
the whole world kin" and that made him at home and at ease with the
learned and the unlearned; with the high and with the humble. It was
this that gave to his friendliness that personal touch that made so
many his personal friends and filled so many with a sense of personal
loss in his death.
He loved his state and his people. He was consecrated to their inter-ests
and jealous of their honor and reputation. Love of North Carolina
and her people became a positive force in the life of every student that
ever came within the circle of his influence.
He was full of hope and good cheer; of sunshine and of sympathy.
He scattered these wherever he went. His presence was a joy and a
benediction. In it, selfishness was shamed, the tongue of slander was
silenced, littleness, narrowness, and prejudice slunk away.
"The weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude,
He took as he found them, and did them all good."
He was full of enthusiasm, and his enthusiasm was contagious. He
was full of courage, and his courage, too, was contagious. He was full
17
of strength, and the weak grew strong and the strong grew stronger
under his influence.
He was full of energy—tireless, persistent energy. He was full of
honesty, moral and intellectual, private and public—old-fashioned, rug-ged
honesty. It beamed from every feature of his face ; it shone in every
act of his life; it rang in every tone of his voice. There was nothing
hidden about him, because there was nothing to hide.
He was full of faith in God and man and faith in the final triumph
of the right. Therefore, he never gave up a fight for right and was
never cast down by defeat. The blood of the Scotch Covenanter flowed
in his veins, and devotion to duty and consecration to conviction were
ruling passions with him. He was ever impatient with the lack of these
in others. He was a hard fighter for what he believed in, but he always
fought a' clean fight; he always hit above the belt; he always respected
a generous foe; he bore no malice when the fight was over.
He had "a hand as open as day to melting charity." He could never
turn a deaf ear to any cry of need or to any call for any worthy object.
How much he gave away will never be known until the record is
opened at the great white throne. Money to him was "so much trash as
may be grasped thus," save as it could be made to serve him and to
serve others.
He had large capacity for enjoying the good things of this life and
believed in enjoying them in all proper ways. Often have I heard him
quote with heartiest approval the words of the old showman in Dick-ens:
"The people muth be amused." In his philosophy of life, pessi-mism,
puritanism, pharisaism, asceticism had no place; religion, pure
and undefiled, had large place.
He was a man of great intellectual power and of rare versatility
—
a masterful man. Power dwelt in him and went out from him.
There was in him much of saving common sense ; much of creative and
constructive power; much of that gift of vision vouchsafed only unto
greatness. He was a fine judge of men. He took their measure with
almost unerring judgment. He saw their faults, their weaknesses, was
patient with them and pitied them. He saw their virtues, their
strength, admired them and used them. He never allowed the one to
blind him to the other. He had the rarest power that I have ever known
of finding the best in men and in getting the best out of men. He was
a great leader of men.
Without any of the arts of the orator, he was the most convinc-ing,
the most irresistible speaker that I have ever heard. He was too
intense, too earnest to employ paltry decorations of speech. He spoke
directly and simply as one having authority. He had a message and
felt, Woe is me if I do not deliver it. He forgot himself in his message.
Men heard him gladly; thought not of the manner of the man or of the
forms of his speech, but never forgot the message that fell from his
18
lips, the fire of earnestness and enthusiasm that was struck from his
soul as he spoke, and kindled kindred fires in theirs as they listened.
He would have been successful in almost any calling—what a great
lawyer he could have been; what a superb leader in politics and public
life; what a splendid captain of industry in any line; what a prince of
promoters in any great commercial enterprise! He could have been
almost anything he chose to be.
All his splendid powers he joyously laid upon the altar of public
service. I believe that God anointed him and set him apart as a servant
to his people. He heard the call to service and followed it as singly and
as devotedly as ever noble knight in Arthurian legend followed the Holy
Grail. He had a high ideal of public service, and to it he subordinated
every tempting offer of private gain or personal aggrandizement. Public
education was his chosen field of service. With the clear-sightedness of
greatness, he saw that universal education Avas the only hope of universal
emancipation and the only safe foundation for the broadest democracy.
He saw, too, that the surest, shortest road to universal education was
the education of woman, the mother and teacher, and, through her, the
education of all the children of men. To this special field, therefore, he
devoted his chief attention; but there was no department of education
which did not receive his helpful touch. His conception of public
service, however, was not narrowed to the one field of public education.
He was active in every field that offered opportunity for public service
in social, political, commercial circles, in his town, in his state, and
in the nation.
This was the man, Charles D. Mclver, as I knew him—great in mind,
great in heart, great in service to his fellowmen: how great, men did not
fully understand while he walked beside them, but know now by the
lengthening and ever-lengthening shadow of his life that death has
thrown across the state, across the South, across the nation. He is
gone! To those of us who knew him best and loved him most, life can
never be the same again—there can be no other friend like him.
"He is not dead, he doth not sleep
—
He hath awakened from the dream of life."
" ;Tis Death is dead, not he."
NORTH CAROLINA STATE LIBRS
"HE DIED POOR THAT HE MIGHT MAKE OTHERS RICH.
BY JOSEPIIUS DANIELS.
Not many months ago there came to Dr. Mclver a great temptation
—
the supreme temptation of his life. He had passed the forty-fifth year
of his life and his twenty-fifth year in the teaching profession and
poured himself into his work so completely that he had not thought of
making money, and sometimes he Avas oppressed by the thought that if
his health should fail he would have nothing to take care of himself and
his family. He was wont to say to his friends that as a teacher grew
older and needed larger income, he could look forward to no increase in
salary, but to an old age of privation. And that outlook was one that
sometimes weighed upon his spirits.
I shall never forget a long conference in Raleigh between Mclver,
Joyner, and myself, that went far past midnight less than a year ago,
when Mclver put aside a temptation to make money that he might con-tinue
the great work to which he had consecrated his life. An offer had
come to him, an inviting offer, from a commercial enterprise of stand-ing
to accept an important position at a salary of $7,500 a year.
Before that, he had declined several flattering offers to go to other
states in the work of his profession. But when an offer at a salary of
three times what the state paid him was urged upon him by a broad-minded
business man who saw that Mclver's ability and energy would be
a valuable asset, the duty of caring for his family and providing for old
age caused him to give the proposition serious consideration.
I knew he would never yield to the temptation, just as I knew that
most other men would have accepted the offer without a moment's hesita-tion;
and yet he was troubled because he felt that his duty to his
family and to himself could not be easily put aside to serve the state,
Avhich paid him only enough for a comfortable living. He said he
wished Joyner and myself, whom he esteemed as brothers, to advise
him what course he ought to pursue. He thought he was holding the
matter under advisement, but way down in his heart there was a devo-tion
to the higher duty that would have prevented his acceptance of
the business proposition if it had carried a salary of twice seventy-five
hundred dollars. He argued that, having given twenty years to the
public, the time had come when he owed something to his family. Both
Joyner and myself argued that he would be happy in no other work,
and the enlargement and growth of the college was a greater service to
his family than if he could give them a million dollars. I shall never
forget the reply he made to our argument:
20
"It is very well, boys, for you both to tell me that I ought to stay
and devote my life to the work. You are serving the public also, but
Joyner owns property and faces no old age of poverty, and every lick
that Daniels strikes he is adding value to his property that will give
him an income if his health fails and care for his wife and children if
he dies. I have not even a roof to my head that belongs to me and not
a brick of all that I have builded is mine or could help my family if I
should die."
I was ashamed then that I had dared to put myself in the same class
with him or to presume that my service to the public weal was com-parable
to his sacrifice. A silence fell upon us—the sort of silence that
only comes between men who understand one another and love each
other. He broke the silence. He had gone through his temptation and
his trial. The advice he sought really had little to do with his victory,
for if every friend had advised him to leave the work to which he had
put his hand, he could not have done it. He loved it better than any-thing
except his own flesh and blood. He thought he was considering
the offer, but there never was a moment when he could have accepted it,
though remaining at the post of duty seemed to sacrifice his material
interests and prevented any provision for old age.
And as I looked Wednesday upon the splendid buildings he had
erected at the college, his words came back to me, that not one brick
he had placed upon another belonged to him or would help to support
his family or care for him in his old age. And yet, with that knowledge,
he put aside the natural desire of the husband and father and threw
himself into the work for humanity with fresh zeal. The incident was
closed. His consecration, new and complete, to his work gave him joy
and happiness. When he had met and conquered the temptation to put
making money, in an honorable way and for the highest purpose, above
the vision he had seen and the duty he had accepted, there came to him
a peace and a purpose that gave him larger vision and a higher
ambition than he had hitherto known, and when he died he was planning
greater things than his associates had dreamed he entertained. There
never was a time when the temptation to leave his life-work could have
moved him; but I have thought how much richer his good wife and
children are because of his noble public service than if he had turned
aside to make money for them. They have in the high purpose of his
life the heritage of a love so great as to find alone in perfect sacrifice to
a great and humane idea its best and final expression.
Said Mr. Bryan in his Greensboro eulogy: "We have a great man
—
Rockefeller, the richest man in the world; and if I had to choose
between leaving the record of Dr. Mclver and leaving the record of
Rockefeller, I would a thousand times rather leave Mclver's record to
posterity."
There is something, after all, higher and better than the inheritance
of yellow gold!
AMERICA.
BY S. F. SMITH.
My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love!
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills,
My heart with rapture thrills
Like that above!
Let music swell the breeze
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song;
Let mortal tongues awake,
Let all that breathe partake,
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong!
Our fathers' God, to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom's holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King!
STORIES OF CHARLES D. MclVER.
BY SUPERINTENDENT J. Y. JOYNER.
MclVER'S STRUGGLE FOR AN EDUCATION.
AT THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL.
Mclver was reared on a farm in Chatham county. Before the war
his father was in comfortable circumstances, owning a good farm and
a number of slaves. He had something of the Scotch economy and thrift
and made a comfortable and easy living. He was a man of influence in
his community. He was a man, also, of large sympathies and was
known throughout the community for his charity, as a great friend of
all the poor people in the surrounding country. Like so many other
Southern planters, upon his return home after four years' service in the
Confederate army, he found his property swept away, with nothing left
but land and debt. The boys went to work on the farm. There was no
sort of farm work that Charles D. Mclver was not familiar with and
that he had not done on his father's farm. Throughout his life he
loved the farm and the farmer. He believed that every boy ought to be
taught to dig and delve in the soil with his own hands and be brought
into this sort of close contact with Mother Nature and Mother Earth.
The community in which he lived was a Scotch community. The Scotch
of this state have always been great believers in education. His father
and his Scotch neighbors, therefore, even in their poverty, managed
to keep in the neighborhood a good private school. Mclver received his
preparation for college in this neighborhood school. The school was
taught by an old-fashioned schoolmaster who believed in the power of
drill and drudgery. Mclver always held this teacher in the highest
esteem.
AT THE UNIVERSITY.
When the time came for him to go to college, his father was unable
to provide the necessary funds. His boy was anxious to go to college
and the father was anxious for him to go, so the money was borrowed.
Mclver went to college and completed his college course on borrowed
money. Out of his meager salary he paid every cent of it back in a
few years after leaving college. He entered college in 1877. His home
was about thirty miles from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. His father took him and two of his cousins, who entered college
with him, across the country by private conveyance to the university
commencement in June, 1877, to make arrangements for entering. It
was the country boy's first long trip from home. It was the first large
representative North Carolina crowd that he had ever seen. Our
greatest statesman and leader and lover of the common people, Zebu! on
B. Vance, at that time governor of the state, delivered the commence-ment
address. The occasion, the speech, and the great man who deliv-ered
it, produced a profound impression upon the young hoy that
became a distinct and shaping influence in his life. He has often
described the occasion to me and told me that it was the beginning of
a new era in his life. From that day he was an ardent admirer of
Governor Vance. Because of this experience and his recollection of the
inspiration of it to him, he was ever afterwards a firm believer in
requiring students to remain to commencement exercises and in the
value of bringing masterful men to speak to students.
He made a fine record as a student at the university. He was well
prepared, especially in the classics. He was an unusually fine Greek
scholar, winning the medal for the best scholarship in his Greek class at
the university. He soon became a leader among the college students.
In the university, as afterwards in life, however, he used his leadership
largety for the promotion of the interests of others, never seeking college
honors for himself, but rarely failing to secure them for the friends
whose cause he championed.
I recall an amusing incident illustrating his power to fight a fight
to the finish and win without leaving any burnings in the hearts even of
his opponents. There were two parties in the Dialectic Literary Society,
of which he was a member, known as the South Building and the West
Building parties. Mclver was the leader of the West Building party.
The elections for college honors had just been held and the West Build-ing
party had won. On the night after the election, one of the leaders
of the South Building party, a classmate of Mclver's, walked into
Mclver's room and said to him: "Mac, you fellows have beaten us
shamefully and I have been sent by the South Building party to give
you a beating." Then tapping him lightly on the shoulder, he said:
"I guess this will do." The truth is, nobody could bear any malice
against Charles D. Mclver. He always fought a clean fight, and even
his opponents could hardly help loving him when the fight was over.
I have no doubt that Mclver's struggle and sacrifice in getting his
college education helped to- explain his sympathy for struggling boys
and girls of limited means, his eloquent speeches in their cause, his
lifelong devotion to the university, and his love and gratitude to his
state. The university never had a more loyal son than Charles D.
Mclver. He stood up for its interests everywhere and at all times. He
never failed to respond to its call for anything. It was always his
custom to attend the commencement. He missed only one commence-ment
of his Alma Mater after his graduation in 1881. He was provi-dentially
detained from that. Great souls like his are always grateful.
Through all his life he felt that he owed to the university and to the
24
state a debt of gratitude that he could never repay for making it possi-ble
for him to get an education. He determined to devote his life to
helping every boy and girl in North Carolina get an education. He
aided in every possible way every movement set on foot for the advance-ment
of the interests, the progress, and the prosperity of the state that
he loved with the tender love of a son for his mother.
MclVER'S FIRST ATTEMPT AT PUBLIC SPEAKING.
As a college student, Mclver could not be induced to speak in public.
He wrote a graduating essay, but begged to be excused and was excused
from delivering a graduating address. He was always a fine talker and
on the campus was usually the center of an interested group of his fellow-students
when he began to talk; but he did not believe that he could
make a public speech.
Immediately after his graduation he was employed to teach in a
private school at Durham. During the session the principal of the
school, on account of the death of his father, resigned and left the
school in charge of Mclver. There was a rival private school in the
town taught by a clergyman, Dr. Deans. Mclver's school had closed
and he remained a few days afterwards to attend the commencement
exercises of Dr. Deans' school. On the closing night of these exercises,
after the regular exercises were over, as is frequently the custom, the
audience called for short speeches from a number of prominent citizens.
Much to his surprise and confusion, somebody started a cry for Mclver.
The cry was so persistent and prolonged that Mclver finally rose from
his seat in the audience, covered with confusion, his face as red as a
peony, and began stammeringly thus: "I sympathize with Dr. Deans
—
I sympathize with Dr. Deans—I sympathize with Dr. Deans." Unable
to give utterance to another thought, he sat down amidst laughter and
applause. It was some years afterwards before he ever attempted to
make another speech in public. He became one of the strongest and
most irresistible speakers that I have ever heard. He became, in spite
of his natural timidity, a great speaker, because he had a message and
was controlled by a profound conviction that it was his mission to
deliver that message. He could never speak with any power or effective-ness
when he did not have some definite message to deliver and some
specific end in view.
HOW MclVER FOUND HIS MISSION.
After the death of his father, Mclver being the oldest child, became
the real head of the family. When his only sister was prepared for
college, he looked about him for a place to send her. He was determined
that she should have a college education and it was necessary for him
to help provide the funds to enable her to secure it. He examined the
courses of study and the charges of the various colleges for women in
25
the state. He found, as he expressed it, that, at any of the reputable
colleges for women in the state, his sister's annual expenses would be
about twice his annual expenses at the State University. He found that
the courses of study were nothing like so extensive or thorough. Too
much attention was given to the ornamental branches, such as music and
art, and too little attention to the classics, English, mathematics, and
other branches of study that tended to develop real mental muscle and
give broad mental culture. No attention was given to domestic science
and those subjects that prepare women for housekeeping and home-making
or for fitting them to> become independent and self-supporting.
He found, also, that he was taught at the university by a faculty cost-ing
four or five times as much as the faculty that would teach his sister
at any of these colleges, though she would have to pay twice as much
for instruction by this inferior faculty giving this inferior course of
study. He was not long in arriving at the causes of this difference. He
saw that the state for a hundred years, as he expressed it, had been
going into partnership with the men at the university and paying part
of the expense of higher education for them through state appropriations
and endowments. The churches, through the endowments of their col-leges,
had been doing the same thing for men. Philanthropists had been
doing the same thing for negro men and women in North Carolina. But
not one cent had ever been invested by state, church, or philanthropist to
decrease the cost of higher education for the white women of North
Carolina and to provide for them anything like equal educational oppor-tunities.
His chivalrous nature and his great soul rebelled against this
injustice to woman and this, perhaps unintentional, but none the less
inexcusable discrimination against her by church and state. He saw,
also, with the clear vision of a great mind that the educated woman
in home and school and social and civic life was the strategic point in
education and civilization. He tersely and forcefully expressed this
truth as follows
:
"When a man is educated it is simply one more taken from the lists
of ignorance; but in the education of a woman the whole family is
taught, for she will pass on what she has learned to her children.
The education of one woman is far more important for the world's
advancement than that of one man."
From that moment his mission and his message were clear to him.
From that moment he became the ablest and most eloquent champion of
better educational opportunities for the women of North Carolina. He
believed in the people. There was nobody else to carry his message to
the people. He overcame his dislike to public speaking. He went to the
people. He never lost an opportunity to present to them with pen and
tongue this truth that he so clearly saw and with which his soul was
all on fire. The people heard his message and believed in him. He won
his fight. To-day in North Carolina church and state are seeking to
give through endowments and appropriations to all women, rich and
26
poor, opportunities for higher education equal to those provided for men
and better adapted to the needs of women than heretofore.
The State Normal and Industrial College is the enduring monument
of his victory.
HIS KINDLINESS OF HEART.
One of the most beautiful traits of Dr. Mclver's character was his
broad democracy and his sympathy with the weak. A man as strong as
he is often unsympathetic with weakness in others. It was this sym-pathy
and patience with weakness that helped to make him a great
teacher and to win for him the admiration and the affection of the weak
as well as the strong.
The devotion of his servants to him was beautiful, but not more beau-tiful
than his kindness to them. I remember when we were abroad last
fall, I went with him one day into a clothing store in London. It was on
the eve of our departure for home. He had already bought a number of
presents for friends at home. In the clothing store I found him select-ing
a somewhat handsome checked English waistcoat. I said: "Mclver,
what in the world are you going to do with that?" He replied: "I
could not think of anything that would please Zeke more. I am going
to take it to him." Zeke is the negro janitor at the college. He has been
in Dr. Mclver's service for about twenty years. His devotion to him
and to his entire family is touching. I doubt if the heart of any friend
of Dr. Mclver was more rent with grief at his death than the heart that
beat in the bosom of Zeke, his faithful servant. When Dr. Mclver died,
Zeke watched by his remains all night and could not be induced to leave
them for a moment. Next day he asked the privilege of driving the
carriage that carried the family in the funeral procession. No friend
has been truer or more thoughtful since his death to the widow and
children.
One of the old family negroes, whose father had belonged to Dr.
Mclver's father, was employed on the college farm. He had been
Mclver's boyhood playmate on the farm. Giles was his name. He was
devoted to Dr. Mclver and had been at work on the college farm for
years. Giles would get drunk occasionally, however, and when on a
spree would sometimes go to a festival and was liable to use a razor.
Giles got into trouble one night, and next morning he was missing from
his accustomed place on the farm. Nothing was heard of him for
several months. One day as Mclver sat in his office, a letter was
brought from Giles, in Philadelphia, stating that he was ill and out of
money and asking for a loan of $30. Mclver did not wait to write, but
telegraphed him the money. As soon as Giles recovered, he returned,
homesick and penitent. Nobody knew of his coming or of his intention
to return. One morning Giles was found at his usual work on the farm.
This was all that was known or said about his escapade. He returned,
of course, every cent of the money borrowed.
SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL POLICIES.
[Extracts from Addresses of Charles D. McIver.]
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION.
"The supreme question in civilization is education. From the stand-point
of communities, states, and nations, education is an effort to pre-serve
and transmit to posterity the best that we can see, and know, and
be, and do. Sometimes we think it is a pity that a good man who has
learned to be of service to his fellows should be called out of the world.
So sometimes we may think about an enterprising and useful generation
;
but after all, the generations of men are but relays in civilization's
march on its journey from savagery to the millennium. Each genera-tion
owes it to the past and to the future that no previous worthy
attainment or achievement, whether of thought or deed or vision, shall
be lost. It is also under the highest obligation to make at least as
much progress on the march as has been made by any generation that
has gone before. Education is simply civilization's effort to propagate
and perpetuate its life and progress."
THE DEMOCRACY OF EDUCATION.
"It is the salvation of democracy that education cannot be bought
or given or inherited or sold, like clothes and what we choose to call
real estate. The person educated must contribute more to> his education
than all others combined, though he cannot do the task alone. Parents,
teachers, tax-payers, and philanthropists can aid him; but all of them
combined cannot educate a man without his consent or without his
systematic, patient toil. It is in this sense that every man is the
architect of his own fortune."
FOUR EDUCATIONAL NEEDS.
In my opinion, the majority of the schools of the South need and
need badly:
1. Better houses and equipment.
2. Longer terms.
3. Stronger teachers.
4. More effective supervision.
Reducing these needs to a common denominator, we have four distinct
calls for more money.
28
AN EDUCATIONAL INVESTMENT.
"There is a large number of people in North Carolina who believe
that the state ought to issue bonds for the proper physical equipment
of the state's educational institutions. All the money appropriated by
the people for educational purposes, whether in the district schools, in
the benevolent schools for the deaf and blind and orphan asylums, or
in its colleges and universities, is an investment, and while no individual
or corporation can go into the business of borrowing for current expenses,
it is a fact recognized by all corporations and by most individuals in
business that borrowing for investment in a plant or for permanent
improvement is not only wise, but it is generally necessary for any
great work. Unquestionably, it would be easy to find in any community
in North Carolina strong, intelligent debaters on either side of the
question. There would be those who would insist upon the motto: 'Pay
as you go; if you can't pay, don't go.' There would be others equally
honest who would say : 'We must go, and, as the only way to go forward
as we ought to go is to borrow from our richer selves in the future, let
us issue enough bonds to make the necessary permanent improvements
in the state's plant in every department and show the same kind of
faith in ourselves that every important city in the state has shown in
itself by issuing bonds for public elementary and high school buildings.' "
STRONGER TEACHERS NEEDED.
"The school-teacher, if properly qualified, is our most important public
official. Those who teach the young are civilization's most powerful
agents, and society everywhere ought to set apart and consecrate to its
greatest work its bravest, its best, its strongest men and women. The
teacher is the seed-corn of civilization, and none but the best is good
enough to use.
"A higher standard of teaching, of course, calls for a higher standard
of compensation. Teachers are no better because the people do not
desire better teachers. On the streets of the cities of some of the
Southern states untrained and unskilled laborers, some of them illit-erate,
are paid $1.25 a day and perhaps more. This is more than the
average public school teacher in the South is paid. I do not say it is
too much. I use it merely for the sake of comparison. * '* * I repeat,
I do not think the compensation of the former class is too great, but the
person who builds citizens and shapes the character and thought of the
young is worth more to society than the man who builds houses and
molds iron."
THE INFLUENCE OF THE TEACHER.
"We frequently hear comments on the inferiority of teachers. Can
we expect to secure the most capable men and women to train children
at a smaller wage than we pay convicts from the penitentiary when we
29
employ them to work on our public roads? * * * There is nothing in
this house that we would let a $40 a month laborer work upon, except
the brains of our children. You listened to a magnificent address here
last night on the economic value of an education; but a weakling
cannot train boys and girls into great men and women whose education
has economic value. We must have masters as teachers. I would prefer
that my boy and girl should come into occasional contact with a master
spirit, even if they did not gain so much literary training, than to come
into contact with a teacher with all the degrees that the colleges can
confer, but who is a wooden sort of a person without generous ambition
and without the power to inspire generous ambition in others. Let us
keep impressing upon the public that in order to secure masterful
teachers, who are the seed-corn of civilization, whose business it is to
hand down from this generation to the next the best that we have been
able to see and know and do and dream, we must be willing to invest in
the trainers of our children more money and time and thought than we
have ever yet invested in them. I do not want my children taught
geography by a person who has never been outside of the congressional
district in which she is teaching. I do not want my children to be
taught the relation between capital and labor by a man or woman who
never expects to see more than $150 or $200 capital for a year's salary.
"It is not a question of wasting the time of a child for six or seven
years, but it is the waste of the time of an active worker in after-life
—
man or woman. Too many people underrate the value of a child's time.
* * * There are people who seem to think that a little child's time
is worth nothing, and waste it by putting it in charge of a teacher with-out
skill and inspiration. . We forget that it is the man or the woman's
time we are wasting. Six or seven years of a child's life wasted means
sixty or seventy years of effective manhood or womanhood wasted."
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
"The chief factors of any civilization are its homes and its primary
schools. Homes and primary schools are made by women rather than
by men. No state which will once educate its mothers need have any
fear about future illiteracy, An educated man may be the father of
illiterate children, but the children of educated women are never illit-erate.
* * * Money invested in the education of a man is a good
investment, but the dividend which it yields is frequently confined to one
generation and is of the material kind. It strengthens his judgment,
gives him foresight, and makes him a more productive laborer in any
field of activity. It does the same thing for a woman; but her field of
activity is usually with children, and therefore the money invested in
the education of a woman yields a better educational dividend than that
invested in the education of a man."
30
THE IMPORTANCE OF SUPERVISION.
THE STATE SUPERINTENDENT.
"The most important officers in the South to-day are the state superin-tendents
of public instruction and the county superintendents. Unfortu-nately,
the salaries of our state superintendents and their allowances for
traveling expenses are not sufficient to secure the most effective service.
It is more important to any state in the South to have a state superin-tendent
of towering ability than to have a governor or a congressman of
towering ability. In most of the Southern states we pay our state
superintendent of public instruction a salary of from $1,500 to $2,000.
We pay our governors from $3,000 to $5,000. Congressmen are paid
$5,000. In spite of this, some state superintendents are superior in point
of ability and efficiency to some governors. * * *
"Every efficient state superintendent in the South knows that, under
the present conditions, his particular work is in the field and not in
the office ; yet many of the best superintendents are handicapped because
they cannot remain in the field and labor where labor is most needed,
unless they are willing to do so at their own expense out of their meager
salaries. It is exceedingly poor economy on the part of the state to
limit, by inadequate provision for necessary traveling expenses, the
state superintendent's work.
THE COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT.
"But let us now direct our attention to the county superintendent. He
ought to be the livest man and most influential leader among his people.
This is exactly what a few county superintendents are; but such men
are very rare, and it is no wonder they are rare. Nothing is so indica-tive
of the low ebb of public education as the pitiable price we are
willing to pay for the services of the county superintendent. The secur-ing
of a competent and capable man for this great work is almost an
accident and is of rare occurrence.
"As a rule, an ambitious county superintendent with a family cannot
live on the salary of his position. And yet public thought needs to be
stimulated most just where this man touches the life of the people. His
work, more than any other public work in his community, needs a man of
great power, tact, and energy. He should be a man who can win the
confidence of the intelligent, lead the ignorant and illiterate, and give
hope and inspiration to plodding men of mediocre ability and position.
In an argument on general questions, he should be able to hold his own
with the strongest professional or commercial men he may chance to
meet; and in the discussion of educational questions he ought to be
more than a match for them. He ought not to be a mere examiner of
teachers or a gatherer of statistics. * * * The chief work of the
local superintendents now should be to show the county commissioners
31
and 'the powers that be' in politics and business what the educational
necessities of his county are, and how these necessities can be supplied,
and he ought to be able to help secure proper support from the people."
FUTURE LESSONS IN TAXATION.
"We have heard in ancient days that it is robbery to tax Brown's
property to educate Jones' children. In the future no one will question
the right of the state to tax the property of Brown and Jones to develop
the state through its children. We and our fathers have too often
thought of a state as a piece of land with mineral resources, forests,
water-courses, and certain climatic conditions. The future will recog-nize
that people—not trees and rocks and rivers and imaginary boundary
lines—make a state, and that the state is great, intelligent, wealthy,
and powerful, or is small, ignorant, poverty-stricken, and weak, just in
proportion as its people are educated, or as they are untrained and raw,
like the natural material about them. It has been too common a polit-ical
teaching that the best government is that which levies the smallest
taxes. The future will modify that doctrine and teach that liberal taxa-tion,
fairly levied and properly applied, is the chief mark of a civilized
people. The savage pays no tax."
THE TEACHER MUST BE A LEADER.
"The inauguration of a movement for the betterment of conditions in
any field of human activity must be made primarily by the laborers in
that field. Physicians have not expected lawyers to lead in matters of
sanitation; lawyers have not depended upon farmers for judicial legisla-tion;
farmers have not bettered their conditions except when the repre-sentatives
of their calling are able to lead or to teach others to lead.
No more can Ave expect great educational advance movements except
under the leadership of teachers or leaders who have been instructed or
inspired by teachers. We must lead our own movements so far as we
can, and, in addition, we must often furnish a brief of fact and argument
to those in high political place for a quicker and more influential leader-ship.
The school-teacher can educate public sentiment to see the truth
in regard to public education, so that it will be impossible for those who
are indifferent or hostile to the cause to be elected to positions of honor
or power. It is worth a great deal to a county to have a sheriff,
or a judge, or a county commissioner who is, in time of need, a fighting
friend for the cause of public education. When the masses of the
people, educated and uneducated, are brought to the realization of the
highest interests of themselves and their children, they will not be slow
to develop political educational leaders from their own ranks."
\
HO! FOR CAROLINA! %
BY WILLIAM B. IIAKRELL.
MX
Let no heart in sorrow weep for other days; ^
Let no idle dreamer tell in melting lays
Of the merry meetings in the rosy bowers;
For there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours! ^&
Ho! for Carolina! that's the land for me;
In her happy borders roam the brave and free:
And her bright-eyed daughters none can fairer be;
Oh ! it is a land of love and sweet liberty
!
Down in Carolina grows the lofty pine,
And her groves and forests bear the scented vine;
Here are peaceful homes, too, nestling 'mid the flowers.
Oh ! there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours
!
Ho! for Carolina! etc.
Come to Carolina in the summer-time,
When the luscious fruits are hanging in their prime,
And the maidens singing in the leafy bowers;
Oh! there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours!
Ho! for Carolina! etc.
Then, for Carolina, brave and free, and strong,
Sound the meed of praises "in story and in song"
From her fertile vales and lofty granite towers,
For there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours
!
CHORUS.
Ho! for Carolina! that's the land for me;
In her happy borders roam the brave and free:
And her bright-eyed daughters none can fairer be;
Oh! it is a land of love and sweet liberty!

PROGRAM OF EXERCISES
NORTH CAROLINA DAY
(MclVER MEMORIAL DAY)
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1906
COMPILED BY
R. D. W. CONNOR
ISSUED FROM THE OFFICE OF THE
STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION,
RALEIGH, N. C.
CHAPTER 164
OF THE PUBLIC LAWS OF 1901.
An Act to Provide for the Celebration of North Carolina Day
in the Public Schools.
The General Assembly of North Carolina do enact:
Section 1. That the 12th day of October in each and every year, to
be called "North Carolina Day," may be devoted, by appropriate exer-cises
in the public schools of the state, to the consideration of some
topic or topics of our state history, to be selected by the superintendent
of public instruction: Provided, that if the said day shall fall on Sat-urday
or Sunday, then the celebration shall occur on the Monday next
following: Provided further, that if the said day shall fall at a time
when any such school may not be in session, the celebration may be held
within one month from the beginning of the term, unless the superin-tendent
of public instruction shall designate some other time.
Sec. 2. This act shall be in force from and after its ratification.
In the General Assembly read three times, and ratified this the 9th
day of February, A. D. 1901.
CONTENTS.
The Old Xorth State, William Gaston.
Charles Duncan McIver. A Sonnet, . . . William C. Smith.
Charles Duncan McIver. A Sketch, ... R. D. W. Connor.
The Coronach, Sir Walter Scott.
Charles D. McIver as I Knew Him, J. Y. Joyner.
''He Died Poor that He Might Make Others Rich," Josephus Daniels.
America, S. F. Smith.
Stories of Charles D. McIver, J. Y. Joyner.
Southern Educational Policies, Charles D. McIver.
Ho! For Carolina, William B. Harrell.
PREFACE.
To the Teacher:
We have deemed it wise and proper to turn aside this year from our
plan of celebrating North Carolina Day in the public schools by the study
of the great events in the past history of the state in chronological order
to let the children study the life and character of one who, in the
years to come, will be recognized as the greatest educational leader
of our day and as a great central figure in the educational and industrial
development of our state. We wish this day to be devoted, therefore,
to a reverent study of the life, character, and unselfish service of
Charles D. Mclver, the children's friend, the teacher's friend, the state's
friend, the effective and courageous champion of all that vitally
affected the interests of these.
We know no more effective means of teaching to the children of this
generation the all-important lesson of civic service and civic duty, of
inspiring them with the highest ideal of patriotism and right living
and of inculcating in them the best educational doctrines than the
study of the splendid object-lesson in all to be found in the simple story
of the life and teachings of this man.
Every child in North Carolina ought to contribute something to the
fund for the erection of an heroic bronze statue to his memory. Such
contribution would be an object-lesson to each child, never to be forgotten,
in properly honoring the memory of a great teacher who unselfishly
devoted his life to the children and the state. Let every teacher urge
every child to bring on North Carolina Day a contribution to this fund.
Forward all contributions by post-office order, if possible, to me.
Very truly yours,
J. Y. JOYNER,
Superintendent Public Instruction.
November 5, 1906.
THE OLD NORTH STATE.
BY WILLIAM GASTON.
[This was Dr. Mclver's favorite song. He made it the rallying song of the college, and
had the students sing it at every commencement and on all other public occasions. It was
a joy and inspiration to watch his face as the six hundred girls sang it.— J. Y. J.]
Carolina! Carolina! Heaven's blessings attend her!
While we live we will cherish, protect, and defend her!
Though the scorner may sneer at and witlings defame her,
Our hearts swell with gladness whenever we name her.
Hurrah! Hurrah! the Old North State forever!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the good Old North State!
Though she envies not others their merited glory,
Say, whose name stands foremost in Liberty's story?
Though too true to herself e'er to crouch to oppression,
Who can yield to just rule more loyal submission?
Hurrah, etc.
Plain and artless her sons, but whose doors open faster
At the knock of a stranger, or the tale of disaster?
How like to the rudeness of their dear native mountains,
With rich ore in their bosoms and life in their fountains.
Hurrah, etc.
Then let all who love us, love the land that we live in
(As happy a region as on this side of Heaven),
Where Plenty and Freedom, Love and Peace smile before us.
Raise aloud, raise together the heart-thrilling chorus!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the Old North State forever!
Hurrah ! Hurrah ! the good Old North State
!
CHARLES DUNCAN MclVER.
WILLIAM C. SMITH.
Rest, son of Carolina, sweetly rest
:
The boon long self-denied now meetly thine.
Obedience yield we to the call divine,
Our comfort this—the Master knoweth best.
He knoweth best, yet sore we feel our need
;
So great the void, we may not smile nor sing,
But, bowed in grief, our altar-gift we bring
And mid our tears look mutely up and plead.
* Grant us with him to see where honor lies;
To build for God and man, and not for self;
To face the future with untroubled eyes,
Intent on lasting service, not on pelf.
Thus life lives on its purpose to fulfil
When weary eyelids close and tired hands grow still.
CHARLES DUNCAN MclVER.
BY R. D. W. CONNOR.
THE FARMER BOY.
To-day there are thousands of boys and girls in North Carolina who
are at school in pretty school-houses, sitting in comfortable desks,
reciting to good teachers, and looking forward to bright futures, because
Charles D. Mclver was their friend. They may never have seen him,
and he may never have seen them: but he loved them; worked for
them; spoke for them; wrote for them; fought and won battles for
them. His picture ought to hang before the eyes of every school child
in North Carolina. His name ought to be on their tongues. They ought
to know by heart the story of his life.
Charles Duncan Mclver, the Children's Friend, was born in Moore
county, in the Old North State, September 27, 1860. The names of
most of the people living in the neighborhood began, like his own, with
"Mac," for these people were descendants of Scotch Highlanders. His
own grandfather was born in the Highlands of Scotland and came
to North Carolina when he was only eight years old. So Charles D.
Mclver was the grandson of a Scotch Highlander.
Last year in our "North Carolina Day" exercises we learned that the
Highlanders are "a strong and active race, large in stature, well-devel-oped
in body, robust in health." They are economical, thrifty, and char-itable.
They are brave and patriotic. They are generous and true in
their friendships. They love the truth and fear God. They believe in
building churches and schools. They regard education and religion as
the chief concerns of life.
Such a man was the father of Charles D. Mclver; such a woman was
his mother. Together they made him such a man. There were two
things the father always insisted upon his boys doing: first, to attend
regularly the best school within reach ; second, to work regularly on the
farm on Saturdays and during vacations. The best schools then were
the private schools, and to one of these Charles D. Mclver was sent. He
was a good student, for he knew too well the value of an education to
waste his time in school. He was a good worker on the farm, for he
knew too Avell the value of the lessons learned in the field to waste his
holidays and vacations in idleness. "Saturdays were as regular work-days
for young Mclver as for any of the employees on the farm. He
escaped no kind of farm labor, from planting, harvesting, splitting rails,
minding the gap, log-rolling, corn-shucking, piling brush, and digging
ditches, to plowing a deaf mule in a new-ground with a bull-tongue plow.
No loafers were allowed on that farm. Idleness was considered an
unpardonable sin."*
Young Mclver learned to love work, whether with his books or
behind the plow. He used to say that the hardest work he ever tried
to do was resting. After he became a man his friends often begged him
to take a vacation and rest. To one of them who told him he was ruin-ing
his health by hard work, he said: "I cannot rest until my work is
done. My joy is in my work. I had rather do it the best I can and
live a shorter time."
THE UNIVERSITY STUDENT.
When he was seventeen years old he left the farm and neighborhood
school and went to the University of North Carolina. There, too, he
worked hard for four years. When he was graduated in 1881 he was
one of the best scholars in his class. He stood first in Greek and French,
and shared with three others the first place in Latin.
He made many valuable friends at the university. Some of them
are Charles B. Aycock, former Governor of North Carolina; Edwin A.
Alderman, a great orator and educator; James Y. Joyner, State Super-intendent
of Public Instruction, and many other such men.
But the two men who had most influence on him were Dr. Kemp P.
Battle, then president of the university, and Dr. George T. Winston, then
professor of Latin. Dr. Mclver said that Dr. Battle regarded "the
people of North Carolina as a great big family, each member of which
owes to every other member affectionate sympathy and loyal support in
any worthy undertaking. He loves the people of this state. * * *
Every sprig of grass and every bird that touches the soil of North
Carolina is dear to him. "
::" * * He is proud of our history and is
proud that he is proud of it. * * * No man can come under his influ-ence"
without wishing "to be of service to so good a state and so great
a people."
"The other man to whom I feel indebted is Dr. George T. Winston,"
who inspires "in all the youths he touches self-reliance and the audacity
to undertake large tasks."
The spirits of these two great teachers united in Charles D. Mclver.
He, too, came to think of the people of North Carolina as "a great big
family." He was proud of her history. He loved "every sprig of grass
and every bird that touches her soil." He wished "to be of service to so
good a state and so great a people." And he, too, had "self-reliance and
audacity to undertake large tasks." His great work in North Carolina
could not have been done had he not loved the state and had faith in her
power to do great things. This work is a splendid example of the rich-ness
that comes to the state through the life and work of her teachers.
Isaac Erwin Avery in the Charlotte Observer.
HIS FIRST VOTE.
After his graduation young Mclver went to Durham to teach in a
private school. So great was his success that before the close of his first
year he was made principal of the school. While he was teaching in
Durham an election was held upon the question of a local tax for
a public graded school. If the people voted for the tax and started the
public school, Mclver knew that he would have to close his private
school. But he knew, too, that there were many children in the town
who would never get an education unless the public schools were estab-lished.
What should he do? Should he vote for the tax and against
his own school; or should he vote against the tax and for his own
school? It did not take him long to decide this question, for he was
anxious "to be of service" to the children. He was willing to close the
doors of his own school-house if he might only open the doors of the
public school where all the children could go. He cared less for his own
welfare than for the welfare of the children. So he worked for the
local tax and on election day voted for it himself and persuaded other
men to vote for it. He was always proud of the fact that his first vote
was cast for a local tax for public education.
His own school was closed when the graded school opened; and the
people of Durham at once called upon him to teach in the graded school.
He was principal of this school for one and one-half years and then
went to Winston to teach in the graded school there which had been
started by Calvin H. Wiley. After nearly two years' work in Winston,
he became principal of the Literary Department of Peace Institute in
Raleigh, where he remained until June, 1889.
A GREAT SCHOOL FOR WOMEN.
During all these years he had worked hard to improve himself as a
teacher. He visited other schools; talked with other teachers; read
many books on teaching. During his vacations he had taught in sum-mer
schools and institutes for teachers. From this work he learned
that the greatest need of North Carolina was the education of all her
children. He saw that the state must have better school-houses and
longer school terms ; but above all, he saw that she needed better school-teachers.
He knew that no school is any better than its teachers, and the
great question was, How can the teachers be improved ?
Mclver found the answer to this question. He said the state should
build a great school for teaching and training teachers. Such a school
is called a "Normal" School or College. In 1889 Dr. Mclver made a
great speech before the Teachers' Assembly in favor of a Normal College.
The Teachers' Assembly then appointed a committee to go to Raleigh
and urge the legislature to vote money for such a school. Mclver was
placed at the head of this committee and worked hard with the members
of the legislature; but they would not do as he asked.
10
Instead of voting for the Normal School, the legislature decided to
send a man into every county in North Carolina to hold meetings and
teach the teachers and to talk to the people about the education of their
children. Two men were selected for this work—Charles D. Mclver and
Edwin A. Alderman. They began their work in September, 1889. They
met the teachers of every county in the state and taught them how to
teach. They held public meetings of preachers, fanners, lawyers, mer-chants,
editors, mechanics, and everybody else who would come. They
made eloquent speeches to them about the education of their children.
They urged them to vote taxes on their property to support schools.
They spoke about the Normal College for teachers and urged the people
to demand that their legislators vote the money for it. Everywhere they
went the people became more than ever interested in education and in the
improvement of their schools.
When the legislature met in 1891 Mclver again went to Raleigh to
work for the Normal College. It was hard work, for there were many
people who were opposed to such a college. But he lost no chance to
talk to them—in the capitol, on the streets, in the hotels, wherever he
could get a member to listen to him. He told them that the only hope
tens of thousands of boys and girls in the state had to get an education
was in the public schools. Most of the teachers in these public schools
were women. For the good of the children, then, the state ought to* have
a great college where these women teachers could be educated and
trained how to teach.
If the state will build such a college, he said, thousands of girls will
become educated women. Without such a school most of them would
grow up in a state of ignorance. Ignorance is the worst kind of slavery.
Such a college would free the white girls of North Carolina from this
curse. Besides, North Carolina would then secure teachers better than
she had ever had, "who will bless her because she has blessed them."
Dr. Mclver was so deeply in earnest and worked so hard that he
persuaded the legislature to vote the money for the college. It is
called the State Normal and Industrial College for Women and is
located at Greensboro. Dr. Mclver was elected president and remained
president until his death, a period of fourteen years.
During these years the college has had wonderful growth. The two
or three small buildings on ten acres of ground have grown to eleven
buildings on one hundred and thirty acres of ground. The number of
teachers in the college has increased from fifteen to fifty. More than
three thousand young women have been students there. They are daugh-ters
of rich men and poor men ; of preachers, doctors, and lawyers ; of
merchants, manufacturers, and farmers; of mechanics, engineers, and
day laborers; of men working in almost every form of honest labor.
They have come from the country, towns, and cities. Girls from every
county in the state have been students there; and students of the Nor-mal
College have taught school in every county. More than two thou-
11
sand teachers have been trained at this great college how to teach; and
they have taught more than two hundred thousand North Carolina boys
and girls. Truly, as Dr. Mclver said, these women have blessed North
Carolina because she has blessed them.
Charles D. Mclver built this great college. It is "not a thing of brick
and stone," but a great school with "an open door of opportunity to
every worthy white girl, however poor, however rich, within the borders
of the state—a means of fitting her for good and useful citizenship."
It is a college in which is taught "sound learning, liberal culture, earn-est
living, and high thinking." It is "the product of the unselfish love
and labor of one man"—Charles D. Mclver.
THE EDUCATIONAL LEADER.
The building of the State Normal and Industrial College is the greatest
work done in North Carolina within the last twenty-five years. If Dr.
Mclver had done nothing else, this work alone would place him among
the greatest men of North Carolina. But he did much more. Wherever
there was a word to be spoken in the cause of education, especially the
education of Southern boys and girls, his voice was heard. "No meeting
of Southern educators seemed complete without him; no educational
program satisfactory until his name appeared on it."*
Three years ago a leading North Carolina paper expressed the gen-eral
opinion of his work. "Dr. Mclver," it said, "has been a leading
force in every movement looking for progress, educational or otherwise,
in North Carolina. * * * When the history of this decade is written,
the story of the public services rendered his state by Charles Duncan
Mclver will be one of the brightest pages in the splendid volume of
patriotic achievement. There is not a man in the state who has made
himself felt so powerfully and so helpfully for progress."f
In July, 1905, a great New York magazine, The Outlook, expressed
the view held of him in other sections of the country. "In the Southern
states," it said, "there is no man better entitled to be called a champion
of public schools, and of the whole idea of popular education, than
Charles Duncan Mclver of North Carolina. * * * He is a man of
intense earnestness, energy, insight, and common sense. For the past
twelve years his voice has been raised in behalf of popular education,
not only in every county in his own state, but throughout the South and
in great national assemblies. There is no abler speaker on this subject
than Dr. Mclver. He has been the soul of the forward movement in his
region."f
This "forward movement" has been largely a movement for the
improvement of rural schools. A few years ago several patriotic men
from various sections of our country, who are interested in Southern
* N. W. Walker in The University Magazine, October, 1906.
t Quoted in MS. of Prof. W. C. Smith.
12
education, came together and formed the "Southern Education Board."
Their purpose is to help improve the rural schools of the South. Dr.
Mclver was one of the leading members of this board. When the board
decided to send speakers all over the South to talk to the people about
education, they put Dr. Mclver at the head of that great work. Perhaps
no man in our country did more for the education of the boys and girls
on Southern farms than he did.
Not only did he work himself, but he persuaded many others, men and
women, to fight for the cause of the children. Proud of the fact that the
first vote he had ever cast was a vote for local taxation for schools, by
his great eloquence and earnestness he persuaded thousands of others to
follow his example. Local taxation for longer terms, better school-houses,
better teachers, and better supervision—this was his plea. Elo-quently,
earnestly, and successfully he pleaded the cause of the back-woods
boy and the cross-roads girl when they had no other powerful
friend to help them.
Invitations to speak came to him, not only from all over North Caro-lina,
but from the South, the North, the East, and the West. Often he
had to make his appointments months in advance. He went, not where
he could make most reputation for himself, but where he could do
most good to others, If any doubt arose the chances were nearly
always in favor of the smaller and weaker community. The message
was carried to the few hundreds that gathered at the cross-roads store
or the country church rather than to the larger number who assembled
in opera house or city hall. The message, too, had reference to the
special needs of time and place, and so was a sowing of good seed in
suitable soil. It is safe to say that Charles D. Mclver never addressed
an audience without having a distinct end in view, and that end the
doing of good works. There are few places in North Carolina where
his voice has not been raised in behalf of some public measure. Large
audiences, too, in great cities far removed from his native state, have
greeted this educational leader, and from his lips have heard whole-some
truths relative to our educational progress. Thus he has been
invited to make educational addresses in more than one-half of the states
in the Union.*
He was always welcomed in large gatherings in all parts of the
country among the great leaders in our nation. But Charles D. Mclver
was never so happy as when helping a small rural community in his
own state.
Many honors came to Charles D. Mclver. He did not seek them; they
sought him. They sought him because he thought more of the welfare
of others than of his own ambition. In 1892 he was president of the
JSlorth Carolina Teachers' Assembly. In 1905 he was president of the
Southern Educational Association. He held several high and responsi-
* MS. of W. C. Smith.
On page 13, under heading "Death," third line, read "September'
for "October."
12
education, came together and formed the "Southern Education Board."
Their purpose is to help improve the rural schools of the South. Dr.
Mclver was one of the leading members of this board. When the board
decided to send speakers all over the South to talk to the people about
education, they put Dr. Mclver at the head of that great work. Perhaps
no man in our country did more for the education of the boys and girls
on Southern farms than he did.
Not only did he work himself, but he persuaded many others, men and
women, to fight for the cause of the children. Proud of the fact that the
first vote he had ever cast was a vote for local taxation for schools, by
his great eloquence and earnestness he persuaded thousands of others to
follow his example. Local taxation for longer terms, better school-houses,
better teachers, and better supervision—this was his plea. Elo-quently,
earnestly, and successfully he pleaded the cause of the back-woods
boy and the cross-roads girl when they had no other powerful
friend to help them.
Invitations to speak came to him, not only from all over North Caro-lina,
but from the South, the North, the East, and the West. Often he
had to make his appointments months in advance. He went, not where
he could make most reputation for himself, but where he could do
most good to others. If any doubt arose the chances were nearly
always in favor of the smaller and weaker community. The message
was carried to the few hundreds that gathered at the cross-roads store
or the country church rather than to the larger number who assembled
in opera house or city hall. The message, too, had reference to the
special needs of time and place, and so was a sowing of good seed in
greeted this educational leader, and from his lips have heard whole-some
truths relative to our educational progress. Thus he has been
invited to make educational addresses in more than one-half of the states
in the Union.*
He was always welcomed in large gatherings in all parts of the
country among the great leaders in our nation. But Charles D. Mclver
was never so happy as when helping a small rural community in his
own state.
Many honors came to Charles D. Mclver. He did not seek them ; they
sought him. They sought him because he thought more of the welfare
of others than of his own ambition. In 1892 he was president of the
JSIorth Carolina Teachers' Assembly. In 1905 he was president of the
Southern Educational Association. He held several high and responsi-
* MS. of W. C. Smith.
13
ble positions in the National Educational Association, the largest educa-tional
association" in the world. He was president of the Normal
School Department; and in the summer of 1905 came within a few
votes of being elected president of the association itself. His friends
believe that, if he had lived, he would have been elected president in
1907. He was a member of the board of trustees of the University of
North Carolina and always gave the university his loyal support. The
university loved to honor him and conferred upon him the honorary
degrees of Doctor of Letters and Doctor of Laws. He was offered posi-tions
in colleges of other states at salaries higher than the one he was
receiving. More than once he was asked to accept responsible business
positions paying salaries from two to four times as much as the state
paid him. But no amount of money could tempt him to leave the college
he loved or to forsake the cause of the children of North Carolina. Had
he yielded to these temptations, he might have left wealth to his widow
and children; but choosing rather to serve others, he left them the
glory of his name. He died poor that he might make others rich.
Dr. Mclver was most happy in his home life. While he was teaching
in Winston he was married to Miss Lula V. Martin, also a teacher.
Four children, a son and three daughters, have added happiness to
their home. A simple home was his, blessed by love and kindness and
culture and trust in God.
DEATH.
The greatest ambition in Dr. Mclver's life was to be of service to
others. It was while he was rendering a service to his city and to his
state that he met death. On the 17th of October, 1906, he went to
Raleigh as a member of a committee from the city of Greensboro to wel-come
William Jennings Bryan to North Carolina. Returning from Ral-eigh
he was attacked by a severe pain in his chest; and before medical
aid could reach him fell dead in the arms of one of his friends. A large
crowd had gathered at the little station at Burlington to hear the great
Nebraska orator, but at his first words their cheers and applause died
away: smiles became tears, joy changed to grief.
"I am sure that you will agree with us," said Mr. Bryan, "that this
is not the time or occasion for a political speech, when I tell you that
just after we left Durham one of our party, Dr. Charles D. Mclver, sud-denly
died. He was the man who first invited me to North Carolina
twelve years ago. I have never been to your state since but that he was
on the reception committee and the first to greet and cheer me.
When I recently reached New York from abroad Dr. Mclver was there
to greet me and invite me to North Carolina.
"His life, perhaps more than that of any man I knew as well, illus-trated
the value of an ideal. He was an educated man whose sympa-thies
were with the uneducated. He moved in the highest circles, yet
snapped the golden cord unselfishly lifting others up, and he devoted that
14
life towards bringing blessings to the poor. His death is a loss, a fearful
loss to his country, his state, his city of Greensboro, to the glorious insti-tution
of learning which is now his monument, to his family, and a great
personal loss to me. I bid you a sad good-bye."
The news of Dr. Mclver's death carried grief to thousands who had
known and loved him. Throughout the South, in remote states of the
North and West, men who had been encouraged by his words and
inspired by his spirit felt a sudden vacancy in their lives.
In his own beloved state grief was universal. In every corner of North
Carolina the news was heard with bowed head and moist eyes. Men on
the street corners, women in the school-room, children in the remotest
rural district—all felt that the state had suffered a terrible calamity.
A partisan press in the midst of a heated political compaign ceased their
warfare, and at his grave united in eulogy of the dead. With one accord
they mourned his death as the loss of the state's most useful citizen.
But no class of our people felt his loss so deeply as the teachers, whose
greatest friend he was. Hundreds of teachers caught from his presence
a spirit that sent them to their difficult tasks, from the college recitaticn-room
to the humble log-cabin school-house in the backwoods, with hearts
afire and souls inspired to give their best to their country and to
humanity, caring naught for the vast personal sacrifices frequently
involved.
Note.—The author of this sketch acknowledges with sincere thanks and appreciation
the kindness of Mr. W. C. Smith, professor of English in the State Normal and Industrial
College, and of Mr. Charles L. Van Noppen, publisher of "A Biographical History of
North Carolina, " for the use of the MS. of Professor Smith's excellent sketch of Dr.
Mclver, which is to appear, with portrait, in volume V of that valuable work.
CORONACH.
BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.
He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font, reappearing,
From the raindrops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!
The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that are hoary,
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory.
The autumn winds rushing
Waft the leaves that are searest,
But our flower was in flushing
When blighting was nearest.
Fleet foot on the correi,*
Sage counsel in cumber,
f
Red hand in the foray
—
How sound is thy slumber!
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and for ever!
Hollowed hillside.
Trouble.
CHARLES D. MclVER AS I KNEW HIM.
[Address of J. Y. Joyner at the Mclver Memorial Meeting at the State Normal and
Industrial College, November 20, 1906.]
Could I obey the dictates of my heart, I should pay the tribute of a
sacred silence to my dead friend to-day amid these scenes hallowed by a
thousand gracious memories of him. My love and admiration are too
great to find expression in "matter-moulded forms of speech"; but use
and wont must have their due and I, too, must try to speak.
He was the truest friend, the warmest-hearted, the most generous, the
most actively helpful, the most self-forgetful. He loved his friends and
they knew and the whole world knew that he loved them. He sought
their counsel, loved their companionship, and found their approval
sweet. He was ever on the alert for opportunities to help them and to
enable them to help themselves. He often saw such opportunities and
seized them for his friends before they saw them for themselves. I
have known him, unasked, to lay down his work and travel across the
state at his own expense, without reward or the hope of reward, to do
a friend a kindness. He never allowed any one to speak evil of his
friends in his presence or to misrepresent or misunderstand them, unre-buked
and uncorrected.
And he was the friend of all mankind. All who knew him were his
friends. He had the genius of friendliness. He made friends with
strangers more easily than any man I ever knew. There was in him
that touch of nature that dwells in every elemental man "that makes
the whole world kin" and that made him at home and at ease with the
learned and the unlearned; with the high and with the humble. It was
this that gave to his friendliness that personal touch that made so
many his personal friends and filled so many with a sense of personal
loss in his death.
He loved his state and his people. He was consecrated to their inter-ests
and jealous of their honor and reputation. Love of North Carolina
and her people became a positive force in the life of every student that
ever came within the circle of his influence.
He was full of hope and good cheer; of sunshine and of sympathy.
He scattered these wherever he went. His presence was a joy and a
benediction. In it, selfishness was shamed, the tongue of slander was
silenced, littleness, narrowness, and prejudice slunk away.
"The weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude,
He took as he found them, and did them all good."
He was full of enthusiasm, and his enthusiasm was contagious. He
was full of courage, and his courage, too, was contagious. He was full
17
of strength, and the weak grew strong and the strong grew stronger
under his influence.
He was full of energy—tireless, persistent energy. He was full of
honesty, moral and intellectual, private and public—old-fashioned, rug-ged
honesty. It beamed from every feature of his face ; it shone in every
act of his life; it rang in every tone of his voice. There was nothing
hidden about him, because there was nothing to hide.
He was full of faith in God and man and faith in the final triumph
of the right. Therefore, he never gave up a fight for right and was
never cast down by defeat. The blood of the Scotch Covenanter flowed
in his veins, and devotion to duty and consecration to conviction were
ruling passions with him. He was ever impatient with the lack of these
in others. He was a hard fighter for what he believed in, but he always
fought a' clean fight; he always hit above the belt; he always respected
a generous foe; he bore no malice when the fight was over.
He had "a hand as open as day to melting charity." He could never
turn a deaf ear to any cry of need or to any call for any worthy object.
How much he gave away will never be known until the record is
opened at the great white throne. Money to him was "so much trash as
may be grasped thus," save as it could be made to serve him and to
serve others.
He had large capacity for enjoying the good things of this life and
believed in enjoying them in all proper ways. Often have I heard him
quote with heartiest approval the words of the old showman in Dick-ens:
"The people muth be amused." In his philosophy of life, pessi-mism,
puritanism, pharisaism, asceticism had no place; religion, pure
and undefiled, had large place.
He was a man of great intellectual power and of rare versatility
—
a masterful man. Power dwelt in him and went out from him.
There was in him much of saving common sense ; much of creative and
constructive power; much of that gift of vision vouchsafed only unto
greatness. He was a fine judge of men. He took their measure with
almost unerring judgment. He saw their faults, their weaknesses, was
patient with them and pitied them. He saw their virtues, their
strength, admired them and used them. He never allowed the one to
blind him to the other. He had the rarest power that I have ever known
of finding the best in men and in getting the best out of men. He was
a great leader of men.
Without any of the arts of the orator, he was the most convinc-ing,
the most irresistible speaker that I have ever heard. He was too
intense, too earnest to employ paltry decorations of speech. He spoke
directly and simply as one having authority. He had a message and
felt, Woe is me if I do not deliver it. He forgot himself in his message.
Men heard him gladly; thought not of the manner of the man or of the
forms of his speech, but never forgot the message that fell from his
18
lips, the fire of earnestness and enthusiasm that was struck from his
soul as he spoke, and kindled kindred fires in theirs as they listened.
He would have been successful in almost any calling—what a great
lawyer he could have been; what a superb leader in politics and public
life; what a splendid captain of industry in any line; what a prince of
promoters in any great commercial enterprise! He could have been
almost anything he chose to be.
All his splendid powers he joyously laid upon the altar of public
service. I believe that God anointed him and set him apart as a servant
to his people. He heard the call to service and followed it as singly and
as devotedly as ever noble knight in Arthurian legend followed the Holy
Grail. He had a high ideal of public service, and to it he subordinated
every tempting offer of private gain or personal aggrandizement. Public
education was his chosen field of service. With the clear-sightedness of
greatness, he saw that universal education Avas the only hope of universal
emancipation and the only safe foundation for the broadest democracy.
He saw, too, that the surest, shortest road to universal education was
the education of woman, the mother and teacher, and, through her, the
education of all the children of men. To this special field, therefore, he
devoted his chief attention; but there was no department of education
which did not receive his helpful touch. His conception of public
service, however, was not narrowed to the one field of public education.
He was active in every field that offered opportunity for public service
in social, political, commercial circles, in his town, in his state, and
in the nation.
This was the man, Charles D. Mclver, as I knew him—great in mind,
great in heart, great in service to his fellowmen: how great, men did not
fully understand while he walked beside them, but know now by the
lengthening and ever-lengthening shadow of his life that death has
thrown across the state, across the South, across the nation. He is
gone! To those of us who knew him best and loved him most, life can
never be the same again—there can be no other friend like him.
"He is not dead, he doth not sleep
—
He hath awakened from the dream of life."
" ;Tis Death is dead, not he."
NORTH CAROLINA STATE LIBRS
"HE DIED POOR THAT HE MIGHT MAKE OTHERS RICH.
BY JOSEPIIUS DANIELS.
Not many months ago there came to Dr. Mclver a great temptation
—
the supreme temptation of his life. He had passed the forty-fifth year
of his life and his twenty-fifth year in the teaching profession and
poured himself into his work so completely that he had not thought of
making money, and sometimes he Avas oppressed by the thought that if
his health should fail he would have nothing to take care of himself and
his family. He was wont to say to his friends that as a teacher grew
older and needed larger income, he could look forward to no increase in
salary, but to an old age of privation. And that outlook was one that
sometimes weighed upon his spirits.
I shall never forget a long conference in Raleigh between Mclver,
Joyner, and myself, that went far past midnight less than a year ago,
when Mclver put aside a temptation to make money that he might con-tinue
the great work to which he had consecrated his life. An offer had
come to him, an inviting offer, from a commercial enterprise of stand-ing
to accept an important position at a salary of $7,500 a year.
Before that, he had declined several flattering offers to go to other
states in the work of his profession. But when an offer at a salary of
three times what the state paid him was urged upon him by a broad-minded
business man who saw that Mclver's ability and energy would be
a valuable asset, the duty of caring for his family and providing for old
age caused him to give the proposition serious consideration.
I knew he would never yield to the temptation, just as I knew that
most other men would have accepted the offer without a moment's hesita-tion;
and yet he was troubled because he felt that his duty to his
family and to himself could not be easily put aside to serve the state,
Avhich paid him only enough for a comfortable living. He said he
wished Joyner and myself, whom he esteemed as brothers, to advise
him what course he ought to pursue. He thought he was holding the
matter under advisement, but way down in his heart there was a devo-tion
to the higher duty that would have prevented his acceptance of
the business proposition if it had carried a salary of twice seventy-five
hundred dollars. He argued that, having given twenty years to the
public, the time had come when he owed something to his family. Both
Joyner and myself argued that he would be happy in no other work,
and the enlargement and growth of the college was a greater service to
his family than if he could give them a million dollars. I shall never
forget the reply he made to our argument:
20
"It is very well, boys, for you both to tell me that I ought to stay
and devote my life to the work. You are serving the public also, but
Joyner owns property and faces no old age of poverty, and every lick
that Daniels strikes he is adding value to his property that will give
him an income if his health fails and care for his wife and children if
he dies. I have not even a roof to my head that belongs to me and not
a brick of all that I have builded is mine or could help my family if I
should die."
I was ashamed then that I had dared to put myself in the same class
with him or to presume that my service to the public weal was com-parable
to his sacrifice. A silence fell upon us—the sort of silence that
only comes between men who understand one another and love each
other. He broke the silence. He had gone through his temptation and
his trial. The advice he sought really had little to do with his victory,
for if every friend had advised him to leave the work to which he had
put his hand, he could not have done it. He loved it better than any-thing
except his own flesh and blood. He thought he was considering
the offer, but there never was a moment when he could have accepted it,
though remaining at the post of duty seemed to sacrifice his material
interests and prevented any provision for old age.
And as I looked Wednesday upon the splendid buildings he had
erected at the college, his words came back to me, that not one brick
he had placed upon another belonged to him or would help to support
his family or care for him in his old age. And yet, with that knowledge,
he put aside the natural desire of the husband and father and threw
himself into the work for humanity with fresh zeal. The incident was
closed. His consecration, new and complete, to his work gave him joy
and happiness. When he had met and conquered the temptation to put
making money, in an honorable way and for the highest purpose, above
the vision he had seen and the duty he had accepted, there came to him
a peace and a purpose that gave him larger vision and a higher
ambition than he had hitherto known, and when he died he was planning
greater things than his associates had dreamed he entertained. There
never was a time when the temptation to leave his life-work could have
moved him; but I have thought how much richer his good wife and
children are because of his noble public service than if he had turned
aside to make money for them. They have in the high purpose of his
life the heritage of a love so great as to find alone in perfect sacrifice to
a great and humane idea its best and final expression.
Said Mr. Bryan in his Greensboro eulogy: "We have a great man
—
Rockefeller, the richest man in the world; and if I had to choose
between leaving the record of Dr. Mclver and leaving the record of
Rockefeller, I would a thousand times rather leave Mclver's record to
posterity."
There is something, after all, higher and better than the inheritance
of yellow gold!
AMERICA.
BY S. F. SMITH.
My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love!
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills,
My heart with rapture thrills
Like that above!
Let music swell the breeze
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song;
Let mortal tongues awake,
Let all that breathe partake,
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong!
Our fathers' God, to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom's holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King!
STORIES OF CHARLES D. MclVER.
BY SUPERINTENDENT J. Y. JOYNER.
MclVER'S STRUGGLE FOR AN EDUCATION.
AT THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL.
Mclver was reared on a farm in Chatham county. Before the war
his father was in comfortable circumstances, owning a good farm and
a number of slaves. He had something of the Scotch economy and thrift
and made a comfortable and easy living. He was a man of influence in
his community. He was a man, also, of large sympathies and was
known throughout the community for his charity, as a great friend of
all the poor people in the surrounding country. Like so many other
Southern planters, upon his return home after four years' service in the
Confederate army, he found his property swept away, with nothing left
but land and debt. The boys went to work on the farm. There was no
sort of farm work that Charles D. Mclver was not familiar with and
that he had not done on his father's farm. Throughout his life he
loved the farm and the farmer. He believed that every boy ought to be
taught to dig and delve in the soil with his own hands and be brought
into this sort of close contact with Mother Nature and Mother Earth.
The community in which he lived was a Scotch community. The Scotch
of this state have always been great believers in education. His father
and his Scotch neighbors, therefore, even in their poverty, managed
to keep in the neighborhood a good private school. Mclver received his
preparation for college in this neighborhood school. The school was
taught by an old-fashioned schoolmaster who believed in the power of
drill and drudgery. Mclver always held this teacher in the highest
esteem.
AT THE UNIVERSITY.
When the time came for him to go to college, his father was unable
to provide the necessary funds. His boy was anxious to go to college
and the father was anxious for him to go, so the money was borrowed.
Mclver went to college and completed his college course on borrowed
money. Out of his meager salary he paid every cent of it back in a
few years after leaving college. He entered college in 1877. His home
was about thirty miles from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. His father took him and two of his cousins, who entered college
with him, across the country by private conveyance to the university
commencement in June, 1877, to make arrangements for entering. It
was the country boy's first long trip from home. It was the first large
representative North Carolina crowd that he had ever seen. Our
greatest statesman and leader and lover of the common people, Zebu! on
B. Vance, at that time governor of the state, delivered the commence-ment
address. The occasion, the speech, and the great man who deliv-ered
it, produced a profound impression upon the young hoy that
became a distinct and shaping influence in his life. He has often
described the occasion to me and told me that it was the beginning of
a new era in his life. From that day he was an ardent admirer of
Governor Vance. Because of this experience and his recollection of the
inspiration of it to him, he was ever afterwards a firm believer in
requiring students to remain to commencement exercises and in the
value of bringing masterful men to speak to students.
He made a fine record as a student at the university. He was well
prepared, especially in the classics. He was an unusually fine Greek
scholar, winning the medal for the best scholarship in his Greek class at
the university. He soon became a leader among the college students.
In the university, as afterwards in life, however, he used his leadership
largety for the promotion of the interests of others, never seeking college
honors for himself, but rarely failing to secure them for the friends
whose cause he championed.
I recall an amusing incident illustrating his power to fight a fight
to the finish and win without leaving any burnings in the hearts even of
his opponents. There were two parties in the Dialectic Literary Society,
of which he was a member, known as the South Building and the West
Building parties. Mclver was the leader of the West Building party.
The elections for college honors had just been held and the West Build-ing
party had won. On the night after the election, one of the leaders
of the South Building party, a classmate of Mclver's, walked into
Mclver's room and said to him: "Mac, you fellows have beaten us
shamefully and I have been sent by the South Building party to give
you a beating." Then tapping him lightly on the shoulder, he said:
"I guess this will do." The truth is, nobody could bear any malice
against Charles D. Mclver. He always fought a clean fight, and even
his opponents could hardly help loving him when the fight was over.
I have no doubt that Mclver's struggle and sacrifice in getting his
college education helped to- explain his sympathy for struggling boys
and girls of limited means, his eloquent speeches in their cause, his
lifelong devotion to the university, and his love and gratitude to his
state. The university never had a more loyal son than Charles D.
Mclver. He stood up for its interests everywhere and at all times. He
never failed to respond to its call for anything. It was always his
custom to attend the commencement. He missed only one commence-ment
of his Alma Mater after his graduation in 1881. He was provi-dentially
detained from that. Great souls like his are always grateful.
Through all his life he felt that he owed to the university and to the
24
state a debt of gratitude that he could never repay for making it possi-ble
for him to get an education. He determined to devote his life to
helping every boy and girl in North Carolina get an education. He
aided in every possible way every movement set on foot for the advance-ment
of the interests, the progress, and the prosperity of the state that
he loved with the tender love of a son for his mother.
MclVER'S FIRST ATTEMPT AT PUBLIC SPEAKING.
As a college student, Mclver could not be induced to speak in public.
He wrote a graduating essay, but begged to be excused and was excused
from delivering a graduating address. He was always a fine talker and
on the campus was usually the center of an interested group of his fellow-students
when he began to talk; but he did not believe that he could
make a public speech.
Immediately after his graduation he was employed to teach in a
private school at Durham. During the session the principal of the
school, on account of the death of his father, resigned and left the
school in charge of Mclver. There was a rival private school in the
town taught by a clergyman, Dr. Deans. Mclver's school had closed
and he remained a few days afterwards to attend the commencement
exercises of Dr. Deans' school. On the closing night of these exercises,
after the regular exercises were over, as is frequently the custom, the
audience called for short speeches from a number of prominent citizens.
Much to his surprise and confusion, somebody started a cry for Mclver.
The cry was so persistent and prolonged that Mclver finally rose from
his seat in the audience, covered with confusion, his face as red as a
peony, and began stammeringly thus: "I sympathize with Dr. Deans
—
I sympathize with Dr. Deans—I sympathize with Dr. Deans." Unable
to give utterance to another thought, he sat down amidst laughter and
applause. It was some years afterwards before he ever attempted to
make another speech in public. He became one of the strongest and
most irresistible speakers that I have ever heard. He became, in spite
of his natural timidity, a great speaker, because he had a message and
was controlled by a profound conviction that it was his mission to
deliver that message. He could never speak with any power or effective-ness
when he did not have some definite message to deliver and some
specific end in view.
HOW MclVER FOUND HIS MISSION.
After the death of his father, Mclver being the oldest child, became
the real head of the family. When his only sister was prepared for
college, he looked about him for a place to send her. He was determined
that she should have a college education and it was necessary for him
to help provide the funds to enable her to secure it. He examined the
courses of study and the charges of the various colleges for women in
25
the state. He found, as he expressed it, that, at any of the reputable
colleges for women in the state, his sister's annual expenses would be
about twice his annual expenses at the State University. He found that
the courses of study were nothing like so extensive or thorough. Too
much attention was given to the ornamental branches, such as music and
art, and too little attention to the classics, English, mathematics, and
other branches of study that tended to develop real mental muscle and
give broad mental culture. No attention was given to domestic science
and those subjects that prepare women for housekeeping and home-making
or for fitting them to> become independent and self-supporting.
He found, also, that he was taught at the university by a faculty cost-ing
four or five times as much as the faculty that would teach his sister
at any of these colleges, though she would have to pay twice as much
for instruction by this inferior faculty giving this inferior course of
study. He was not long in arriving at the causes of this difference. He
saw that the state for a hundred years, as he expressed it, had been
going into partnership with the men at the university and paying part
of the expense of higher education for them through state appropriations
and endowments. The churches, through the endowments of their col-leges,
had been doing the same thing for men. Philanthropists had been
doing the same thing for negro men and women in North Carolina. But
not one cent had ever been invested by state, church, or philanthropist to
decrease the cost of higher education for the white women of North
Carolina and to provide for them anything like equal educational oppor-tunities.
His chivalrous nature and his great soul rebelled against this
injustice to woman and this, perhaps unintentional, but none the less
inexcusable discrimination against her by church and state. He saw,
also, with the clear vision of a great mind that the educated woman
in home and school and social and civic life was the strategic point in
education and civilization. He tersely and forcefully expressed this
truth as follows
:
"When a man is educated it is simply one more taken from the lists
of ignorance; but in the education of a woman the whole family is
taught, for she will pass on what she has learned to her children.
The education of one woman is far more important for the world's
advancement than that of one man."
From that moment his mission and his message were clear to him.
From that moment he became the ablest and most eloquent champion of
better educational opportunities for the women of North Carolina. He
believed in the people. There was nobody else to carry his message to
the people. He overcame his dislike to public speaking. He went to the
people. He never lost an opportunity to present to them with pen and
tongue this truth that he so clearly saw and with which his soul was
all on fire. The people heard his message and believed in him. He won
his fight. To-day in North Carolina church and state are seeking to
give through endowments and appropriations to all women, rich and
26
poor, opportunities for higher education equal to those provided for men
and better adapted to the needs of women than heretofore.
The State Normal and Industrial College is the enduring monument
of his victory.
HIS KINDLINESS OF HEART.
One of the most beautiful traits of Dr. Mclver's character was his
broad democracy and his sympathy with the weak. A man as strong as
he is often unsympathetic with weakness in others. It was this sym-pathy
and patience with weakness that helped to make him a great
teacher and to win for him the admiration and the affection of the weak
as well as the strong.
The devotion of his servants to him was beautiful, but not more beau-tiful
than his kindness to them. I remember when we were abroad last
fall, I went with him one day into a clothing store in London. It was on
the eve of our departure for home. He had already bought a number of
presents for friends at home. In the clothing store I found him select-ing
a somewhat handsome checked English waistcoat. I said: "Mclver,
what in the world are you going to do with that?" He replied: "I
could not think of anything that would please Zeke more. I am going
to take it to him." Zeke is the negro janitor at the college. He has been
in Dr. Mclver's service for about twenty years. His devotion to him
and to his entire family is touching. I doubt if the heart of any friend
of Dr. Mclver was more rent with grief at his death than the heart that
beat in the bosom of Zeke, his faithful servant. When Dr. Mclver died,
Zeke watched by his remains all night and could not be induced to leave
them for a moment. Next day he asked the privilege of driving the
carriage that carried the family in the funeral procession. No friend
has been truer or more thoughtful since his death to the widow and
children.
One of the old family negroes, whose father had belonged to Dr.
Mclver's father, was employed on the college farm. He had been
Mclver's boyhood playmate on the farm. Giles was his name. He was
devoted to Dr. Mclver and had been at work on the college farm for
years. Giles would get drunk occasionally, however, and when on a
spree would sometimes go to a festival and was liable to use a razor.
Giles got into trouble one night, and next morning he was missing from
his accustomed place on the farm. Nothing was heard of him for
several months. One day as Mclver sat in his office, a letter was
brought from Giles, in Philadelphia, stating that he was ill and out of
money and asking for a loan of $30. Mclver did not wait to write, but
telegraphed him the money. As soon as Giles recovered, he returned,
homesick and penitent. Nobody knew of his coming or of his intention
to return. One morning Giles was found at his usual work on the farm.
This was all that was known or said about his escapade. He returned,
of course, every cent of the money borrowed.
SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL POLICIES.
[Extracts from Addresses of Charles D. McIver.]
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION.
"The supreme question in civilization is education. From the stand-point
of communities, states, and nations, education is an effort to pre-serve
and transmit to posterity the best that we can see, and know, and
be, and do. Sometimes we think it is a pity that a good man who has
learned to be of service to his fellows should be called out of the world.
So sometimes we may think about an enterprising and useful generation
;
but after all, the generations of men are but relays in civilization's
march on its journey from savagery to the millennium. Each genera-tion
owes it to the past and to the future that no previous worthy
attainment or achievement, whether of thought or deed or vision, shall
be lost. It is also under the highest obligation to make at least as
much progress on the march as has been made by any generation that
has gone before. Education is simply civilization's effort to propagate
and perpetuate its life and progress."
THE DEMOCRACY OF EDUCATION.
"It is the salvation of democracy that education cannot be bought
or given or inherited or sold, like clothes and what we choose to call
real estate. The person educated must contribute more to> his education
than all others combined, though he cannot do the task alone. Parents,
teachers, tax-payers, and philanthropists can aid him; but all of them
combined cannot educate a man without his consent or without his
systematic, patient toil. It is in this sense that every man is the
architect of his own fortune."
FOUR EDUCATIONAL NEEDS.
In my opinion, the majority of the schools of the South need and
need badly:
1. Better houses and equipment.
2. Longer terms.
3. Stronger teachers.
4. More effective supervision.
Reducing these needs to a common denominator, we have four distinct
calls for more money.
28
AN EDUCATIONAL INVESTMENT.
"There is a large number of people in North Carolina who believe
that the state ought to issue bonds for the proper physical equipment
of the state's educational institutions. All the money appropriated by
the people for educational purposes, whether in the district schools, in
the benevolent schools for the deaf and blind and orphan asylums, or
in its colleges and universities, is an investment, and while no individual
or corporation can go into the business of borrowing for current expenses,
it is a fact recognized by all corporations and by most individuals in
business that borrowing for investment in a plant or for permanent
improvement is not only wise, but it is generally necessary for any
great work. Unquestionably, it would be easy to find in any community
in North Carolina strong, intelligent debaters on either side of the
question. There would be those who would insist upon the motto: 'Pay
as you go; if you can't pay, don't go.' There would be others equally
honest who would say : 'We must go, and, as the only way to go forward
as we ought to go is to borrow from our richer selves in the future, let
us issue enough bonds to make the necessary permanent improvements
in the state's plant in every department and show the same kind of
faith in ourselves that every important city in the state has shown in
itself by issuing bonds for public elementary and high school buildings.' "
STRONGER TEACHERS NEEDED.
"The school-teacher, if properly qualified, is our most important public
official. Those who teach the young are civilization's most powerful
agents, and society everywhere ought to set apart and consecrate to its
greatest work its bravest, its best, its strongest men and women. The
teacher is the seed-corn of civilization, and none but the best is good
enough to use.
"A higher standard of teaching, of course, calls for a higher standard
of compensation. Teachers are no better because the people do not
desire better teachers. On the streets of the cities of some of the
Southern states untrained and unskilled laborers, some of them illit-erate,
are paid $1.25 a day and perhaps more. This is more than the
average public school teacher in the South is paid. I do not say it is
too much. I use it merely for the sake of comparison. * '* * I repeat,
I do not think the compensation of the former class is too great, but the
person who builds citizens and shapes the character and thought of the
young is worth more to society than the man who builds houses and
molds iron."
THE INFLUENCE OF THE TEACHER.
"We frequently hear comments on the inferiority of teachers. Can
we expect to secure the most capable men and women to train children
at a smaller wage than we pay convicts from the penitentiary when we
29
employ them to work on our public roads? * * * There is nothing in
this house that we would let a $40 a month laborer work upon, except
the brains of our children. You listened to a magnificent address here
last night on the economic value of an education; but a weakling
cannot train boys and girls into great men and women whose education
has economic value. We must have masters as teachers. I would prefer
that my boy and girl should come into occasional contact with a master
spirit, even if they did not gain so much literary training, than to come
into contact with a teacher with all the degrees that the colleges can
confer, but who is a wooden sort of a person without generous ambition
and without the power to inspire generous ambition in others. Let us
keep impressing upon the public that in order to secure masterful
teachers, who are the seed-corn of civilization, whose business it is to
hand down from this generation to the next the best that we have been
able to see and know and do and dream, we must be willing to invest in
the trainers of our children more money and time and thought than we
have ever yet invested in them. I do not want my children taught
geography by a person who has never been outside of the congressional
district in which she is teaching. I do not want my children to be
taught the relation between capital and labor by a man or woman who
never expects to see more than $150 or $200 capital for a year's salary.
"It is not a question of wasting the time of a child for six or seven
years, but it is the waste of the time of an active worker in after-life
—
man or woman. Too many people underrate the value of a child's time.
* * * There are people who seem to think that a little child's time
is worth nothing, and waste it by putting it in charge of a teacher with-out
skill and inspiration. . We forget that it is the man or the woman's
time we are wasting. Six or seven years of a child's life wasted means
sixty or seventy years of effective manhood or womanhood wasted."
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
"The chief factors of any civilization are its homes and its primary
schools. Homes and primary schools are made by women rather than
by men. No state which will once educate its mothers need have any
fear about future illiteracy, An educated man may be the father of
illiterate children, but the children of educated women are never illit-erate.
* * * Money invested in the education of a man is a good
investment, but the dividend which it yields is frequently confined to one
generation and is of the material kind. It strengthens his judgment,
gives him foresight, and makes him a more productive laborer in any
field of activity. It does the same thing for a woman; but her field of
activity is usually with children, and therefore the money invested in
the education of a woman yields a better educational dividend than that
invested in the education of a man."
30
THE IMPORTANCE OF SUPERVISION.
THE STATE SUPERINTENDENT.
"The most important officers in the South to-day are the state superin-tendents
of public instruction and the county superintendents. Unfortu-nately,
the salaries of our state superintendents and their allowances for
traveling expenses are not sufficient to secure the most effective service.
It is more important to any state in the South to have a state superin-tendent
of towering ability than to have a governor or a congressman of
towering ability. In most of the Southern states we pay our state
superintendent of public instruction a salary of from $1,500 to $2,000.
We pay our governors from $3,000 to $5,000. Congressmen are paid
$5,000. In spite of this, some state superintendents are superior in point
of ability and efficiency to some governors. * * *
"Every efficient state superintendent in the South knows that, under
the present conditions, his particular work is in the field and not in
the office ; yet many of the best superintendents are handicapped because
they cannot remain in the field and labor where labor is most needed,
unless they are willing to do so at their own expense out of their meager
salaries. It is exceedingly poor economy on the part of the state to
limit, by inadequate provision for necessary traveling expenses, the
state superintendent's work.
THE COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT.
"But let us now direct our attention to the county superintendent. He
ought to be the livest man and most influential leader among his people.
This is exactly what a few county superintendents are; but such men
are very rare, and it is no wonder they are rare. Nothing is so indica-tive
of the low ebb of public education as the pitiable price we are
willing to pay for the services of the county superintendent. The secur-ing
of a competent and capable man for this great work is almost an
accident and is of rare occurrence.
"As a rule, an ambitious county superintendent with a family cannot
live on the salary of his position. And yet public thought needs to be
stimulated most just where this man touches the life of the people. His
work, more than any other public work in his community, needs a man of
great power, tact, and energy. He should be a man who can win the
confidence of the intelligent, lead the ignorant and illiterate, and give
hope and inspiration to plodding men of mediocre ability and position.
In an argument on general questions, he should be able to hold his own
with the strongest professional or commercial men he may chance to
meet; and in the discussion of educational questions he ought to be
more than a match for them. He ought not to be a mere examiner of
teachers or a gatherer of statistics. * * * The chief work of the
local superintendents now should be to show the county commissioners
31
and 'the powers that be' in politics and business what the educational
necessities of his county are, and how these necessities can be supplied,
and he ought to be able to help secure proper support from the people."
FUTURE LESSONS IN TAXATION.
"We have heard in ancient days that it is robbery to tax Brown's
property to educate Jones' children. In the future no one will question
the right of the state to tax the property of Brown and Jones to develop
the state through its children. We and our fathers have too often
thought of a state as a piece of land with mineral resources, forests,
water-courses, and certain climatic conditions. The future will recog-nize
that people—not trees and rocks and rivers and imaginary boundary
lines—make a state, and that the state is great, intelligent, wealthy,
and powerful, or is small, ignorant, poverty-stricken, and weak, just in
proportion as its people are educated, or as they are untrained and raw,
like the natural material about them. It has been too common a polit-ical
teaching that the best government is that which levies the smallest
taxes. The future will modify that doctrine and teach that liberal taxa-tion,
fairly levied and properly applied, is the chief mark of a civilized
people. The savage pays no tax."
THE TEACHER MUST BE A LEADER.
"The inauguration of a movement for the betterment of conditions in
any field of human activity must be made primarily by the laborers in
that field. Physicians have not expected lawyers to lead in matters of
sanitation; lawyers have not depended upon farmers for judicial legisla-tion;
farmers have not bettered their conditions except when the repre-sentatives
of their calling are able to lead or to teach others to lead.
No more can Ave expect great educational advance movements except
under the leadership of teachers or leaders who have been instructed or
inspired by teachers. We must lead our own movements so far as we
can, and, in addition, we must often furnish a brief of fact and argument
to those in high political place for a quicker and more influential leader-ship.
The school-teacher can educate public sentiment to see the truth
in regard to public education, so that it will be impossible for those who
are indifferent or hostile to the cause to be elected to positions of honor
or power. It is worth a great deal to a county to have a sheriff,
or a judge, or a county commissioner who is, in time of need, a fighting
friend for the cause of public education. When the masses of the
people, educated and uneducated, are brought to the realization of the
highest interests of themselves and their children, they will not be slow
to develop political educational leaders from their own ranks."
\
HO! FOR CAROLINA! %
BY WILLIAM B. IIAKRELL.
MX
Let no heart in sorrow weep for other days; ^
Let no idle dreamer tell in melting lays
Of the merry meetings in the rosy bowers;
For there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours! ^&
Ho! for Carolina! that's the land for me;
In her happy borders roam the brave and free:
And her bright-eyed daughters none can fairer be;
Oh ! it is a land of love and sweet liberty
!
Down in Carolina grows the lofty pine,
And her groves and forests bear the scented vine;
Here are peaceful homes, too, nestling 'mid the flowers.
Oh ! there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours
!
Ho! for Carolina! etc.
Come to Carolina in the summer-time,
When the luscious fruits are hanging in their prime,
And the maidens singing in the leafy bowers;
Oh! there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours!
Ho! for Carolina! etc.
Then, for Carolina, brave and free, and strong,
Sound the meed of praises "in story and in song"
From her fertile vales and lofty granite towers,
For there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours
!
CHORUS.
Ho! for Carolina! that's the land for me;
In her happy borders roam the brave and free:
And her bright-eyed daughters none can fairer be;
Oh! it is a land of love and sweet liberty!